I'm curious what folks here think of Trump's apparent desire to annex Greenland, and (through economic power) Canada. How serious do you think he is, and would you support him, if he did?
He doesn't want to 'annex' Greenland, he wants to BUY it and he's had one threatening conversation with the Danish prime minister about it already. We know Trump's several bulbs short of a full chandelier and it's clear he hasn't realized we already have Arctic property - with lots of minerals - within whistling range of Russia. It's called Alaska. And if he's threatening to invade Greenland, then NATO would have to rush to Denmark's defense. Against us.
I am on 2 FB groups with Greenlanders, so am listening in on some of the translated repartee and no one wants to become part of the USA. However they are very much enjoying the increased attention they're getting from Denmark over this.
Far as I can tell, Trump wants Greenland not only for the strategic minerals, but also (and probably moreso) because as the Arctic melts, Greenland sits on a strategic shipping route.
Also, my understanding is that Greenland has been mostly ours in practice anyway since around the Cold War, and Trump—with his usual disdain for subtext—is mostly just saying the quiet part out loud. And always remember, he stakes out maximalist opening positions; that's how he negotiates. People should stop being surprised by it at this point.
Apparently he went on to become Lincoln's secretary of state; didn't know that. So he remained in that office after Lincoln's death, and that's when he bought Alaska. Got it.
I know Canada is a troll but it was a small mistake in that it helped seal Trudeau's fate. It was in America's interest to have Trudeau remain leader of the Liberal Party into the parliamentary elections in the fall. I truly wished for a Conservative landslide that would crush the Liberals. Now, with Trudeau on his way out, the Liberals will pick a new leader- probably Chrystia Freeland- and the Canadian press will provide the new leader a great amount of support. A landslide is now in doubt.
I'd actually like to see a coalition government of revived Social Credit and New Democrats (but a New Democratic Party purges of DEI obsessions). Conservatives are just going to be another whirl of the merry go round. However, I'm not a Canadian citizen, so I don't get a vote on the matter.
Rod, why are you still defending Father Carlos Martins on twitter? His lawyers lied about what happened. He put the hair of a 13-year-old girl in his mouth. He is a freak. Stop defending him. Unless you have proof that all those kids are lying.
I think "Climate change isn't real" is more shorthand for: "Climate change isn't the catastrophe that the wokists claim it is, and it doesn't require us to reorganize our entire social and economic life at national scale." Their framing of the thing isn't real.
If the threat of the ice caps melting were immanent I would think that no bank would fund a mortgage in the areas potentially affected. There's obviously some deception going on.
Insurance companies are refusing in many cases to allow people in western NC after Helene because their property is now in a flood plain. I do think climate change alarmism is overblown but we need to be good stewards of God’s creation & not pollute the air with too many greenhouse gases. And the world’s average temperature is going up. Ironically the severe cold in the eastern & southern US is because the warming Arctic is causing the jet stream to dip far south, carrying cold Siberian air from polar regions.
They knew damned well what was expected of them and chose to frustrate the process. It didn’t turn out well for the saboteurs. Everyone is onto these tricks now.
From an outsider’s perspective, if the Greenlanders are in agreement I’ve no issue with the US gaining control there. Danes may disagree because it could feel like they are losing face on the international stage but they would be better being involved in the discussion otherwise they are likely to lose out on any settlement.
On the Canada front, I’ve a degree of schadenfreude - it’s been such a hot mess of liberal nonsense from Trudeau for so long it’s kinda nice to see them squirm. Hopefully it’ll bolster the right and we’ll see them stand up for themselves as partners rather than subjects.
To be honest, I kinda wish Trump would aim to annex the UK and Ireland next- before Two-Tier can complete the ruination of the entire country.
If I'm not mistaken, Denmark and Ukraine signed some sort of mutual defense treaty, probably mostly symbolic, but it's possible that Ukraine would rush its battalions from Donetsk to aid the Danes when we launch a big arrow offensive from Thule Air Base to seize Greenland.
Given the disdain the Eurocrats have for the US in general and Trump in particular, I very much doubt the danish politicians would want to give him a ‘win’ - whatever would Brussels say? Next thing you know he’ll be liberating Catalonia from the Castilian yoke!
Trump is rather impulsive most of the time and he's at his worst with his wish to buy Greenland as if he was Seward buying Alaska from the Czar of Russia in 1867. Greenland is a peculiar case. It is a semi-independent nation of 58,000 that relies on Denmark to subsidize its government, run its foreign affairs and run its defense affairs. America has had a military base at Thule, Greenland since 1941. Trump should drop his wish to purchase Greenland from Denmark as Greenland isn't Denmark's to sell. What Trump should negotiate is an economic treaty where American companies can develop and exploit the mineral-rich interior of Greenland. If America needs another military base in Greenland, that can be negotiated as well.
I’ve been to Greenland. I ‘d be perfectly content to see the status quo maintained. My concern is this, what happens if it becomes independent? It’s simply not viable as an independent country. Greenland definitely can not defend itself. It can’t support itself. It needs a foreign patron . I’m fine with it being Denmark. What I don’t want is it being Russia or China. That’s the context in which what Trump says makes a certain amount of sense. Granted the bullying bluster is totally uncalled for. But there’s a situation here that needs to be monitored. An independent Greenland would only work if it were closely tied to the US or Canada. As for Canada, it was very funny listening to Trump patronizing Trudeau. But Canada has no interest in becoming part of the US . I don’t want Canada to become part of the USA because it would be bad for all concerned.So frankly, on this point Trump should cool it.
See, if he *starts off* by saying he wants to buy Greenland, then something like what you're proposing is probably where we'll end up. That's how the game works.
Yes, but the thing is it's not really obvious to a whole lot of people.
Trump starts by asking for the stars but will settle for then moon - which is all he really wanted to begin with. As for Greenland, I think chances are good he'll get what he really wants, and it will be to our best interests.
Another good thing about Trumps approach to things is that he gets people thinking about things in a new light. Speaking of which - It's not that he's short a few bulbs in the chandelier, it's that he's replacing bulbs that had already burned out a long time ago.
Many people’s paychecks depend on their not admitting various truths. I’m actually curious to know how much of the GDP is generated from outright lies.
Yes! People can't get it through their heads to "take Trump seriously but not literally". They also don't get the dialect and approach of a NYC real estate mogul.
It signifies that the man is certifiably psychotic. This has not been under discussion by anyone, including Trump, until shortly before be was sworn in, when he did his usual "a stray thought crossed my mind, let me bray it forcefully to the world and puff up my chest" performance. IF either Russia or China, or for that matter Brazil, was seeking to occupy Greenland, we could make the same arrangement we made with Iceland during WW II. Otherwise, its a lot of hype and hot air, but Trump has always been about promoting himself and basking in the imagined applause.
(For anyone who wants to retort with a string of criticisms of Kamala Harris or the Democratic Party, most or all of which I probably agree with...
Today's news is that almost all federal employees have been offered a buyout package. That, plus some of the recent firings (at DOJ, among OIGs etc) will do much to upend stultifying bureaucracy.
Don't expect these victories to proceed without a lot of lawsuits. Today several federal employees have sued regarding the new ability of the President to send email to all federal employees, claiming that this violates their privacy. Unbelievable--I can't think of ANY company or corporation that would tolerate that.
In any case, given our massive federal debt and swollen spending (if we were to return to pre-COVID levels, there would not be a meaningful deficit, btw), these measures will help DOGE and the brilliant Russ Vought devise approaches to move back from an the current fiscal cliff, before we reach the point of no return.
I, like many that have followed these developments for some time, in detail, and supported Pres. Trump, am quite pleased with his actions so far. Sure that many here that despise him will disagree. Their privilege to do so.
Think RFK Jr has some ideas for NHS and for that matter, all of HHS. Our medical system has lots of opportunity for improvement, including cost savings--maybe as much as $1T without resorting to the long wait times/rationalizing treatment model of UK and Canada.
If RFK would stick to the task of fighting luridly high healthcare costs I'd cheer for him. But if he goes on a crusade against vaccines (one of the chief reasons for the soaring life expectancies in the 20th century and rock bottom child mortality) or on some crazy health food bender then he's a quack and a crank.
Though there may either be a subgroup of children who are susceptible to vaccines, or a response of some to the increased number of vaccines (or specific vaccines such as Hep B) given.
At least its worth asking the question and studying more rigorously.
There are mixed results as the link shows. If the data is so solid, then a comprehensive study will be confirmatory. But, given the link, it is possible that the science is not “settled.”
It is always worth asking questions, studying more rigorously, and adjusting treatment based on individual biochemistry. Its when political factions start demanding all or nothing because they want to score brownie points that it becomes a problem -- no matter which ideology or faction is pushing what template.
You obviously haven't read him on the subject (surprise, surprise). He is not against vaccines per se; he is troubled by their overuse, by the fact that negative aspects of some of them are ignored, and by the fact that many have been mandated without significant attention being paid to those negatives.
By the death rate from specific infections for which we now have vaccines, and counting up how many children were hospitalized, or died, from those specific infections after vaccines were introduced. Its not complicated. Dr. Carter G. Woodson, for instance, lost two siblings to whooping cough, before vaccines were available.
His siblings died before there were antibiotics available, so that doesn't answer my question. I'm not debating the efficacy of many vaccines, by the way, just curious about attributing all improvements to them.
Of course you've never considered actually reading anything the man has written for himself or sitting down to hear him explain at length the why and how he came to the conclusions he did. If you did that, you'd have to take responsibility for the knowledge and you wouldn't get to remain blissfully ignorant and able to make your holier- than- thou pronouncements about something you knee nothing about.
RFK is just another of the many, many subjects you prefer to remain ignorant about.
RFK is not against vaccines. he is very clear about that.
he is critical of the incentives granted to vaccine manufacturers as well as their overall overuse and toxic adjuvants (most likely due to legal protection from liability).
I have read RFK, starting 20 years ago. His writings are full of gross misinformation. to put it mildly. (Check the history of his infamous essay in Rolling Stone in 2005 when he was pushing "vaccines cause autism," an utterly refuted theory that his "Health" organization was still pushing, as of last year. and claiming thimerosal was poisoning children when it had been gone from all children's vaccines for four years and had never been in most of them.
RFK is claiming he's not anti-vax now, when it will help him get confirmed but he has a long track record of saying such things as "No vaccine is safe" or "polio vaccine killed more people than it saved." And how about his little expedition to Samoa during a measles epidemic there when he campaigned against the taking the measles vaccine. Dozens of children (and no few adults) died because their parents listened and didn't permit them to be vaccinated. Measles is not a trivial disease. It was the biggest killer of non-battlefield deaths during the Civil War. Before the vaccine was adopted, 500 American children a year died--out of a smaller population. Thousands suffered impairment of eyes, ears, or brain. And by the way, antibiotics are useless against a virus.
How many of you predate the polio vaccine? Do you remember seeing people crippled or hearing of other's dead from polio? It's been driven back to a few reservoirs in Pakistan and nearby areas where medics get murdered for trying to vaccinate.
RFK's statements on fluoridated water are tort lawyer-speak and grossly misleading. "The dose makes the poison," people! And as for denying that he'll take vaccines away, he'll cancel the Federal program that settles vaccine complaints, thus exposing the few vaccine manufacturers left to ruinous lawsuits until no vaccines are manufactured here. The man is a dangerous fanatic with a Khmer Rouge mind. He would never have acquired so much influence had his name been "smith" instead of Kennedy. Shall we keep him away from the levers of health power or do we wait around a count corpses?
Seen small pox recently? Oh where did it go? It's been exterminated in the wild by vaccination. The last person to die of it was a baby whose parents wouldn't permit him to be vaccinated.
He’s also pro choice with no restrictions, an environmental extremist, and called the NRA a terrorist organization. (I used to be an NRA member; they’re not terrorists, just massive grifters). These points of view used to be anathema to conservatives. But Trump decides Bobby Brainworm is his man for HHS & people who claim to be prolife & pro 2nd Amendment fall in line. Ditto Tulsi Gabbard. She was a Bernie Sis a few years ago & visited Assad in Syria a couple times. Russia Today TV channel called her “our girlfriend Tulsi”. They may have changed some of their left wing positions but if so, they haven’t said so.
look, I don’t agree with him on every issue at all. he has some boilerplate green energy beliefs that are bat-shit crazy like most all green energy thinking. I am trying to be accurate to what he says about his goals concerning HHS. what do you mean by “Kyhmer Rouge” mindset? do you really believe that he wants to kill millions?
I literally had never heard of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from the time he was arrested in South Dakota after a plane he was on as a passenger had to make an emergency landing due to his heroin overdoes crisis, until he declared he was running for president.
If the president is emailing to their PERSONAL accounts, they are quite right. My last job, although as an on-call on-staff temp for various projects, we were told to keep ALL work related matter on our work related email, and use it only from an employer-provided, certified and monitored device. (Hillary Clinton got in trouble for doing government work on what was essentially a personal server, no?)
They could be. If they are, then government employees have no business complaining that the chief executive contacting them via these emails is an invasion of privacy. The problem I have with almost all position papers, manifestos, social media posts, debating points, is that people all over the spectrum are sloppy with their language.
If you think Trump used poor judgment in exercising a power he does have, its not a constitutional issue. Write to your congress critter. If Trump attempted to exercise a power the constitution does not given him, its a case for the courts.
The radical-feminist take on online Christian men vs. women is funny, but I don’t think it means all that much. It doesn’t prove stronger Christian community between the women than the men. Rather, it just reflects how each sex socializes in that space with peers.
Most online male behavior like that is just banter: men tend to socialize by skewering each other. Women, on the other hand, will schmooze and praise each other online—“Oh, it’s lovely! Where did you get it?”—but skewer each other later in private chats.
Nothing new under the sun, I’d say.
Sure, there remain unhelpful Christian denominational squabbles, but I suspect the online chad battles recounted are 1) exaggerated, and 2) not really driven by ire, but by the itch to banter.
No, living by lies is not over! Trump is the most pathological liar ever to sit in the Oval Office- either that or he's utterly delusional and should be removed via the 25th Anendment with President Vance taking the helm. (Vance is a man I do trust to be honest and ethical, at least by political standards) Folk here lapping up Trumpian lies like cats with milk remind me of the oohing and aahing over the emperor's new clothes.
This will not end well unless God is merciful and old man Trump's life thread is snipped by fate and nature.
I'll take it that he isn't growing on you, then. Ah well. Anyway, I'm pleased that we have now identified Trump's spirit animal, with the hair and all.
Well, I guess there are Catholics who go on sleepless hunts after all things they regard as animist or pagan ("them"), and then there are those who take the stuff in good poetic and syncretic fun—my kind of folk.
Trump’s a bullsh*tter; he’s not a liar. There’s an important difference. Today’s American “liberal” is practically defined by not being able to understand this.
He's also just a fat-mouthed New Yorker. He becomes easy to understand if you (generic you) try to learn the *idiom* instead of just continually insisting contrary to all facts that he uses language in the way you believe it must be used.
When Trump announced, in his usual fashion, 'there's not going to be a hurricane in Alabama,' while the NOAA was providing detailed warnings of an approaching hurricane, some flunky on the White House staff intoned that the NOAA should not be issuing reports that contradict the President of the United States. Was he lying, or just bullshitting?
He was not offering his opinion at all. He was offering his heartfelt desire as a guarantee, and he was dead wrong. Trump responds this way to every disaster, including COVID. First, he says nothing is happening. Then he says we've got it all under control, and nothing is going to happen. Then he says "Nobody could have seen this coming." He's like a child covering his eyes and saying "Make it go away, I don't like it." The NOAA takes measurements, posts those measurements, gives parameters for what is likely to happen, and what does happen generally falls within those parameters. There really was a hurricane headed for Alabama. It was not speculation. This is why Trump can't be trusted, whether you call it lying or bullshitting or juvenile temper tantrums.
And EVERYBODY knew there was a hurricane headed for Alabama. Trump was bullsh*tting with those comments. NO ONE relied on Trump’s comments for their safety or any other practical concern. What Trump was doing was expressing, in his own inarticulate way, confidence that things would work out. The president, like Canute, does not control Nature, and everyone knows that.
What is actionable here is criticism of Trump as a liar. That criticism reveals who exactly his opposition is. And the quality of their mindset.
It’s the same reason secular liberals laugh at people invoking thoughts and prayers after a tragedy. The seculars actually think people who pray are submitting some sort of bureaucratic request to the Butler Lord. What these people cannot comprehend is HOPE. Because they are optimists.
You knew he was bullshitting, but did he? Did the White House staff? Were the staff at NOAA confident of keeping their jobs. When a White House staff member lectures them that they should not contradict the president's bullshit with data and analysis, we are on very shaky ground.
I've heard that line before, and it avoids the problem that a BSer is still a serial liar, just one with good intentions and a fragile ego. A normal liar is simply that - a mercenary who uses lies as convenient to his own ends, and doesn't care that he's lying (he's not fooling himself, nor is he trying).
A BSer, though, lies for the sake of a good story, and often believes even his own nonsense in the moment. His ego is wrapped up in needing people to like him, and his own need to like himself. But BSers are constantly leaving messes behind for others to clean up - broken hearts, empty bank accounts, ruined lives, ruined businesses, and miles of empty promises. I speak from experience here with several in my family. They're fun at parties - they're not fun to live with. He may fool even himself for long stretches, but he's still constantly avoiding the truth, and still dissembling, and then BSing anew when the old lies have finally piled too high - just so long as he can keep spinning tales that puff up his own vanity, and keep his appeal high to others. Nothing is ever his fault - either someone else caused him to fail, or if you nail down the lie he'll squirm out and claim it's your fault for not being more careful.
Sadly, not always, particularly if the BS is also playing to your own hopes and dreams. If you're already skeptical of a BSer, you've got your guards up. But if this person is a close relative, or someone your really admire, or is amplifying something you wish was true, the BS can be harder to spot. I agree that anyone relying on Trump for hurricane forecasts is not exercising sound judgement, but that Trump felt compelled to issue such a prognostication shows the problem with the personality trait - easier to fudge and be liked for "meaning well" than give a hard truth. He wanted to be liked and trusted in that moment, and make people hopeful, so he BSed. It's not a good reflex when under pressure, and while that one was easy to roll one's eyes at, people have relied on other BS promises and declarations from him and been burned.
BSing might be less directly caustic than actual pathological lying (e.g. Obama, Clinton), but we shouldn't give it pass.
Well, no, it’s not to be approved. But it’s best to consider people like Trump less as moral agents than as natural phenomena that must be worked into one’s calculations. My comments are about how we should react to Trump. And I say that complaining about politicians’ lying is not a sign of a mature mind. There is nothing true about Biden. The man is ontologically mendacious. But once we understand that, then we can get down to the work of figuring out how policy will play out.
Competition for the Most Pathological Liar to ever sit in the Oval Office includes Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. TDS has affected your ability to make intelligent judgements, Jon. And I'm curious if you think the 25th Amendment should have been used to remove Joe Biden, since it is now crystal clear that he was unable to perform the duties of President from early in his term.
Well, I think the case could be made that Biden was delusional rather than a liar, insofar as his grip on reality was tenuous and he might have actually believed the things he said.
Yes. Even when young, Biden was a liar. Plagiarism in university. Plagiarized the speeches of Neil Kinnock of the British Labour Party in the late 80s.
In turns? The idea is that you're not technically lying if you sincerely believe in what you're saying; you'd just be mistaken, possibly to a delusional extent.
It's an endless spiral, really. Biden told so many lies in his life, even when he didn't NEED to do so, even when he was younger and not senile, that I wondered at his sanity.
Sure it does. Maybe we could send Trump, Clinton, Biden, Harris, to a remote island for a Most Pathological Liar Reality Series. Then leave them there.
They are very similar to each other - Trump and Bergoglio. Both have gotten to be leaders and both are violently shaking and fracturing their church / country.
Do note that I specified Fate and Nature, and not any uuman agency. It takes no superbly foresight to see that any such action wpuld lead to even worse results.
Nor do I think a Christian can licitly pray for any death. Except perhaps a quick and easy death for someone dying slowly and in great pain.
Trump told the truth, and Biden, along with his fifty former intelligence offers confirming the LAPTOP was Russian disinformation, lied. Had Biden not told that whopper during a nationally televised debate, and the media spread the lie even further, there never would have been a January 6th!
JonF311 this is a free forum, so you can say that which you want to say within Rod's broad range of moderation. Most of us here don't agree with you, and what is more we are relieved to have Trump in office, and not just in office, but taking substantive and courageous actions daily, that in just 9 days since his inauguration, are producing changes that we did not consider possible. We focus on his actions, and not much on his rhetoric. We are done with high falutin rhetoric that soars, but leads to naught for the average American. No need to reply, but, perhaps, if you must, please use all caps so we know how you feel, since you can't gesticulate and raise your voice here to try and make your point.
I hope wokeness is going to disappear at the federal level, but it's going to take a long time to go away on the ground. I hate social media and have never participated in it, but my GenZ daughter does. She made a simple comment on some news Facebook page supporting ICE going into churches and schools to get criminals, and within a day or two, she had been doxed, her post had gone viral, and people (outside our little town) were calling for her to lose her job as a teacher. They said they would protest if she wasn't fired. She also received a death threat, and we had to call in the police. She's on paid leave right now, and the school seems to be supportive, since she didn't do anything illegal, but it's been a nightmare. I can't believe what a woke online mob can do. Agree or disagree (and everyone has the right to disagree) but every American has the right to speak their opinion. But it's still a case of woe to those who have conservative views. She realizes now what a mistake it was, but she had no idea one comment, without even her name attached, could spiral out of control. I would appreciate any prayers for her.
I’m praying that God will bring her through this. This is an incredibly frustrating time to be a teacher but we need good conservatives like her in the schools.
I thought conservatives supported churches being places of refuge. This is news to me that conservatives want law enforcement going into churches to take people out.
What happened to your daughter was awful but ICE should not conduct raids in places of worship or schools. As far as I know, they haven't yet and it's unlikely that they will. Of course, there could be a situation where local law enforcement involvement might be necessary but that would be on a case-by-case basis. As it stands, students are arrested all the time in schools by school resource officers for various criminal transgressions but almost always with the cooperation of the school administration. Let's not make school attendance even more stressful for students and staff by having ICE show up when there are less intrusive options available.
It didn't endure anywhere, in fact. It was abolished in most polities that turned Protestant at the Reformation, and where it was not abolished immediately (e.g., England) it was severely curtailed (in 1540) and finally abolished (in 1623).
It’s actually about removing perverse incentives for illegal immigrants to specifically hide out in those places when they know they’re being sought. The new policy still requires ICE agents to seek approvals from higher up before going in and I expect it will not be common, especially once it becomes known that those places are not beyond ICE’s reach.
This isn't the holocaust, nobody is sending them off to death camps. It's more like sending people from West Virginia back to West Virginia. Sure there's lots of poverty in Latin America, but those countries aren't in famine or civil war, AND they and their kids are way more likely to STAY Catholic.
I saw somewhere that people who were deported to their home countries were telling people not to come here illegally, it’s not worth the risk. This could do a lot to stem the tide, hopefully.
Social media is awful. To be honest I kind of think these kinds of online mobbings just come with the territory (not that that’s a good thing). I was once mobbed, on a thankfully much smaller scale (it did not go viral outside of a particular social circle) for a nuanced Facebook comment in which I critiqued an article posted by a college friend whose basic thesis was that women who’d had career success but weren’t happy or satisfied with their success were proof of workplace sexism. I was soon attacked, upbraided and harangued by all of my friend’s female friends, none of whom I knew personally. A few of them had substantive issues with my critique. Most of them just resorted directly to ad hominem and browbeating. It was stressful and unpleasant and was a contributing factor to my later decision to delete my Facebook account (11 years ago, and I’ve never looked back - free yourself!).
Shame is a tool of social control that plays a necessary role in how human communities regulate themselves. In its proper role, it’s a behavioral corrective and a tool for enforcing social peace. As applied over the internet however, I think it’s more destructive than helpful. It is however a very fundamental bit of human psychology that I doubt we’ll ever be able to resist making use of. As long as there are humans on the internet, I think we will see this type of mob shaming. The only thing that will change will be what things people get attacked for saying or doing. Today it’s not being deferent to the Woke. Tomorrow it might be not being sufficiently anti-Woke.
I’m sorry this happened to your daughter. I think this sort of thing is a bit like being struck by lightning - it’s rare but it does actually happen to people, and there are things you can do to reduce the risk, like not posting about politics or other divisive topics and making sure you have strong privacy settings that limit who can see and interact with your posts (I have never understood why so many people who aren’t trying to be influencers allow strangers to view their social media posts).
Thank you for your thoughts. She did have privacy settings on her Facebook page and Instagram account (where the death threat was posted), but people have ways of doxing that I don't understand because I have nothing to do with social media. Anyway, her original post was not even linked to her private Facebook account and didn't have her name.
Internet hate is cheap to make and spread, sadly. And while most of it is ultimately chaff (angry people at keyboards who will never do anything), that 1 person out of 10,000 who means it is enough.
Ex-liberal here, driven off by DEI but unwilling to sign up for MAGA. Ruthless, honey badger purging of liberals and progressives from the federal government and its network of allied institutions seems like it will create an awful lot of bitterness and rage and contempt, not just among leftist activists but among their friends, family, and associates who don't share ludicrous woke beliefs. Facing job loss has a tendency to induce terror. Even if doing things like ending federal funding for "the Groups" (leftist NGOs) is justified on moral and policy grounds, conducting that as a campaign of punishment for woke excesses doesn't encourage disaffected former liberals to come over to a "Big Tent" GOP or postliberal culture. It just encourages them to wallow in fear. That's not a recipe for encouraging enemies to give up and go along with the new world. That's what it seems like to me, anyway.
Although I voted for Trump this time around, I don't consider myself MAGA. I think you make some very good points here. Trump has used a machete where a scalpel would have been more helpful. Well....maybe not a scalpel, but a good sharp carving knife.
Millei has actually been far more careful and clever than his image suggests. He has accomplished a lot, but he doesn’t have the luxury of controlling the Argentine Congress so he’s had to maneuver carefully to co-opt potential opponents and avoid uniting the other parties against him.
It’s not in Trump’s rhetorical arsenal, but I think he’d do well to take a page from Millei and say to the American populace: “We mean to deliver, but this is going to involve some discomfort.”
Such an approach might be necessary not far down the road.
Maybe, if the deficit is not reigned in and we end up in a major fiscal crisis. We are far from the kind of straights Argentina was in, however. At the moment I do not think the electorate would be very accepting of the kinds of dislocations the Argentines are currently tolerating.
When it comes to dealing with the wokists, though, I could get behind an ethos of total war and salting the earth. These people are conniving and won't go quietly; they do need to be purged from every position of power, and in a way that would make it more difficult for them to regroup. Trump's probably doing what's necessary, having learned from their obstructionism the last time around.
Many moderates object to what they see as “excesses” the Democratic Party has fallen into. They don’t recognize that these excesses are part of a coherent new mode of governance, one that’s slowly entrenched itself across the West, just getting its roots down, and one that, if not thoroughly routed now, will certainly return and proceed to the next predictable stages, which I hope I never see.
I suspect moderates don’t recognize this because they haven’t been on the receiving end. They haven’t contemplated the tentative rollout of tactics like debanking, for instance, or the slow ratcheting up of censorship as norm. They see the wokist projects as mere over-enthusiasm, not as a tool being employed as social content over which a new illiberal order can be ushered in.
So me too, I think there likely needs to be no quarter. But much of the population won’t get why. They’ll see it as gratuitous meanness rather than a necessary seizure of territory.
I think Shrier’s piece was good on driving home what it looked like on the receiving end. And this was just Regime 1.0:
In a way, yes, but given that the big lie for years has been “Mean Orange Fascist,” it won’t be hard for those now out of a job, not to mention those NGOs now without funding cut, to come out screaming: “See, we told you, America!”
That’s why I say above that a little straightforward communication might be needed, as in: “This is going to cause pain, some dislocation, but this is the only way America returns.”
This is 100% right, unfortunately. I had hoped for more understanding from moderates about what has to happen to right the ship, but some recent episodes at my husband’s work are showing me that for moderate democrats and republicans, politeness really is the highest virtue. I shouldn’t be surprised, having been in “polite” Christian circles for a long time, but for some reason it’s disappointed me that otherwise reasonable people seem to find being nice and not being mean as the highest good for an organization. I assume this applies to their views on national politics, too, and explains a lot about why things were allowed to get to this point.
Exactly. And their niceness is such that they can be passive-aggressively bullied into a new variety of authoritarianism. Which, given decades of left dominance in our universities, is the default meaning of “democratic” in the minds of most “educated” people under 40.
When we’ve reached such heights of insanity and rejection of reality, should we be catering to enablers because optics, tiptoeing around their feelings with half measures, or is it high time for some tough love?
A Canadian family we know ended up with a fugitive on their farm after they busted him for littering on their property. True story. Don't mess with Canada.
I see this problem too, though through a slightly different lens. Erasing so many jobs at once gives all these basically career activists nothing to do but set to work networking and organizing. Which is what they do *as a profession*. It creates, a few months down the line, a very angry and well networked wave of pushback.
Still, I don’t think these EOs are “punishment”. Rather, it’s a matter of a pre-emptive strike. Trump and his people know from experience that nothing will get done if state agencies are staffed with people set on foot-dragging and obstruction. So the choice is to get as many out of government as possible. Now.
Still, it may have been wiser to weaken this beast in stages. I’m just not sure how that would work. How it could be implemented.
In any case, this time around, there is strategy behind Trump’s moves. His team is much larger, savvier, and they have weighed their battlefield options. So perhaps they’re *counting on* a huge wave of activism come spring, thinking that the public will side with them against the protesters.
Real liberals, like yourself I assume, realize that our “liberals” had left liberalism far behind. They’d betrayed core principles in favor of social engineering. Censorship, CRT racism, erasure of the idea of borders—none of it is liberal.
As for people in favor of this kind of social engineering, they need to see what they’ve become. Like most Americans, I don’t want to be in any tent that includes them. I support classical liberal politics, not identity war.
I see your point and I also don't consider myself MAGA, but, I think this is awesome!
The government sort of reminds me of the stock room of a retail store. Every time something new comes in you just shove things over and make room and pretty soon you can't find anything. However, once a year or so, you have to take inventory. Everything gets taken out and counted, the store shuts down, and it's a hotter mess than it was before you started inventory. It's a pain in the rear and everyone hates it. But, once you are finished, the stock room and the store are beautiful and organized, the empty packaging and other bits of trash are gone and you can find things again.
We've never, to my knowledge, taken inventory of the government, we just keep shoving stuff onto the shelves until you don't even know what's there anymore.
Certainly, I'm reserving judgement until we see how this all shakes out, I don't think less than 2 weeks is enough time to say one way or another.
What a lovely analogy! I need to do this right now in my pantry. Nothing has a right to be in there unless I decide it’s worth being put back in. I don’t understand why government jobs are seen with such entitlement.
Just from denominational house cleaning in such bodies as the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the SBC, they can be brutal. Families are divided, careers are lost. Most leadership don’t have the heart for it. There is inevitably collateral damage. Trump is unique in having the heart for it. We’ll see what the results are, but from the above examples, it seems like life-long resentment, backlash, and new divisions are part of the deal.
There’s some truth in this but, just as with money, there is a time value of power. Trump has 4 years. As in his first administration, a insiders who slow walk his policies can run out the clock without even trying that hard (after all, government staff are not known for their alacrity at the best of times).
Also, the people who organize public demonstrations and the pencil pushers who have been comfortable with their bureaucratic power for decades are not *necessarily* the same group of people. The preferred organizational strategy of the latter include committee meetings, staff memos and inter-office communiques. Even in the internet age, It will take time for them to find each other, organize, fund raise and take action.
The same doesn’t hold true for the young people at schools and NGOs who have more recent experience with large-scale protest (BLM, Gaza solidarity, etc.). But it’s harder for them to gain traction when they don’t have friends on the inside of government and public support appears to have diminished.
You're right. As one DC friend mentioned in regards to the "work from home" prohibition: many employees moved outside of the city when they were allowed to work remotely. Now living far away from the office, it's basically impossible for them to commute to the office. They will be unable to fufill this mandate to go into the office every day.
There will be some excess "meat" cut off from the "fat" with these new policies. Lets hope the current admin is rapid to mitigate such hardships.
I think the Mars vs. Venus thing is largely an online phenomenon. We have several new young male converts in our parish (Orthodox) and a couple catechumens as well. I've seen no OrthoBro tendencies at all, and in our parish and diocese at least, the priests and the bishop have frequently urged caution regarding "online" Orthodoxy.
Sometimes people rein it in in public. I can't think of a few men at my parish who are perfect gentlemen in public, but get them alone and the bro talk overflows.
Can you think of any women at your parish who are imperfect? Is there tolerance for ‘toxic femininity?’ Would anyone at your parish acknowledge the existence of such a problem?
My general ethos is to be harsh toward our own sex and charitable toward the other. At least in part, that’s based on the principle that I can only criticize what I understand. . . .
Someday someone will explain to me why the stuff that doctors do is only referred to as "care" when it relates to abortion, birth control or gender medicalization and surgeries. It seems to me that actual "care" for troubled teens who have been brainwashed into the gender cult would consist mostly of serious, compassionate mental health intervention. But that's not "care" -- it's just a new kind of "conversion therapy". I'm not a post-modern, but language does matter, and we need to reclaim this term.
Timothy Dolan, no liberal, helped educate Vance on his ludicrous assertion insuiuating that the US Catholic Bishops is more interested in the bottom line than in helping the migrant community. Look I know you like Vance and he is a friend of yours, but he was extremely arrogant and misguided in making that statement on Face the Nation.
Just what part of what Vance said is "ludicrous"? What he left out of course was the smarmy virtue signaling and bogus compassion when the other half of what they're looking to do is cram brown bottoms into the pews now that more and more white people are onto their clergy's depredations. You want offensive? You come to the right shop, friend.
I saw that thing with this "bishop" grandstanding at the national Cathedral. And a NYT article claiming "progressive Christians" found a voice in her. In my arguments with these types, I remind them of the inconvenient truth that they have to ignore a whole lot of Scripture for their "Mercy uber alles" doctrine to pass muster. Most of them grow frustrated, accuse me of following Trump rather than Christ and block me. I've also battled with a few "bro Christians" when I actually mention I'm ok with female pastors, but they should be judged against the same standards their male compatriots are, ie, Scripture. None of those arguments got nasty and none of them blocked me.
I make no claims to be a "moderate," btw. And I'm not looking for any of those debates, here, either. This is just what I have observed.
As I recall, you and I have already gone round on this, too. I've thoroughly explained my position to you, and now you made it clear you completely ignored everything I said and you came charging in here looking for a repeat.
That's what I don't understand, and you also did not comprehend, or willfully ignored what I wrote above, that I did NOT want to argue it.
Would you change your mind, if we did? No? Then what's the point? Would I change my mind? Why yes, I did. Because I used to have that TRADITIION based view on it. but a really good study helped me change my mind on it. Those who stick to the traditional way look to this bishop and nod as if to say, "here's the proof," while ignoring all the rotten male pastors, including those in that bishop's denomination who agree with her.
At the Latin Mass parish my family and I have attended since 2002, I see the husbands and wives living in marriages of romantic Christian love. Our Church is patriarchal surely but the wives are not doormats. Wives and husbands have respect for each other. Families are very large in comparison to modern American families. Most parishioners have made friends for life. Parishioners socialize before Mass and after Mass and often parishioners linger in the parking lot for a half-hour or longer if the weather permits. One family threw a party last Saturday and at least sixty parishioners attended. I usually put together one charter fishing trip each year.
The wives of my parish are not meek and submissive. All the ladies I know best will tell any man their opinion on an issue and not care that the man might not agree with them. The intelligence of the wives are greatly valued. All that our host posted about the feminist critique of Christianity is a bunch of hogwash.
Sometimes lefties and even secular conservatives are prejudiced by the outward appearances of the wives of a parish like the one my family attends. The women wear dresses and skirts which was rather normal in America until the 1960s. The wives wear veils, hats or other head coverings during Mass. The head coverings come off when the ladies leave the front doors of the church. Our wives tend to wear their hair longer than most modern women but we have women who choose to wear their hair short.
Derek. You’ve mentioned in this combox the name of your parish, though I won’t remind readers of it. If you want to, of course you may do so. One of my neighbors, a woman I like very much, is your fellow parishioner. I feel compelled to clarify, though, that it is an ‘independent Catholic’ parish not in communion with the official Roman Catholic Church. The priest was ordained in the Church, Baltimore diocese, years ago, and later joined the SSPX via ‘conditional’ ordination, then left the SSPX in a further split. I am not passing judgment on his or your status as Roman Catholics. I may visit your church one day, though I too am not what the diocesan bishop allows as Catholic. But readers here should understand. I’m not sure that it’s been made entirely clear.
You are exactly right. Father R is independent although he was ordained in the Diocese of Baltimore. Until 2015, Father R was on friendly relations with the SSPX.
All the different GOPs: Hugh gives a crash course in the GOP and how it is now not just GOPe but GOPe plus GOP-NT: The GOP of Nixon as changed and expanded by President Trump: The GOP of center-right common sense.
Byron York provides his overview of the GOP of 2025
I work in a supply house. We supply industrial, plumbing, electrical, septic systems, and pumps. I have noticed a trend over the past decade or so. We are no longer outsourcing and there has been a slow trend towards reshoring manufacturing.60-70% of what we sell is made or at least assembled here. There is a noticeable difference between Chinese and domestic products. The Chinese products will just meet standard while the domestic product often exceeds it and it just better quality. It also will tend to cost more but if you are going to be using it a lot then it is worth it. I have also seen the benefits of tariffs. I don't remember the year but in Trumps first term he put a tariff on Chinese made brass. Thanks to that we reshored our purchases because domestic production was no longer 15% higher. The playing field was level. Sadly there was only literally three domestic suppliers that I had to choose from. We reshored pex fittings and brass nipples. I do believe the domestic supplier of pex fittings has expanded. I have seen no other companies open plants here to help fill the domestic supply market on these items. Without the conscious effort to buy domestic you have about 20 options for Chinese or Indonesian made items. Just on a funny note the buyer of brass ball valves for us got so mad at China about Covid that he switched from a Chinese product to a Taiwanese product. There are domestic products out there also but only two that I know of and they are easily the superior product. I could go on and on about this issue in my field but I will wrap it up as for now.
I have a non-digital torque wrench from Taiwan. Torquing down a flywheel bolt at 200-ft pounds with all my strength, I felt for sure either the tool or bolt would snap in half, until I heard that satisfying "click." Love that wrench.
It’s fine to celebrate the end of DEI, but let’s take a moment to recognize the sheer idiocy of how this is all being done. I work in health research and we have literally no idea when NIH will be able to continue awards. My institution is large, so I suspect we will be fine in the end, but even small delays can be crushing to smaller ones and junior investigators, etc. The vast majority of us, just like in the federal government, aren’t SJW’s, but we are the ones most terrified of what this means for our futures. The ones up top that are the purported targets of all this? They’ll be fine. They have money and connections. The rest of us? Wondering if careers dedicated to helping others is a livable future anymore. It’s not too late for Trump to fix this, but it seems like he clearly doesn’t care about the average person just trying to make a living and do good. Plus all of the research that could be lost, lives that could have been saved, etc. if this uncertainty doesn’t end soon.
My friend with two adopted kids on Medicaid? Also unsure if her kids will have health insurance anymore. And one has the flu right now.
By all means, get rid of DEI. It hasn’t even been proven to be effective, for heaven’s sake. But the collateral damage in sweeping, half baked ideas? Extraordinary.
Is this what you're talking about (from this morning's WaPo)?
The budget office put out a memo Tuesday saying Medicaid was not meant to be affected. However, state and federal officials told The Post on Tuesday that they were unable to draw down funds for Medicaid from a federal payment management system, effectively freezing the program around the country. The insurance program provides coverage to tens of millions of Americans, and state officials said they were weighing the need to halt payments to doctors and hospitals."
I started out as a reporter and "state and federal officials" is unsourced as far as I'm concerned.
I've read reports that the grants in question are funded annually, not like a paycheck. Is this your experience?
For grants, they’re typically awarded for a period of years (most of my projects are 5), but there are annual reports and some background steps on the yearly around disbursement that I’m not closely involved with that can lead to funding being pulled (my understanding is that’s pretty rare but not unheard of). I honestly don’t know if that process has been affected by all this — again, I’m not directly on the finance side so maybe someone else here could speak better on it all.
The big thing to consider is that almost no one is funded with just one grant. We’re all on multiple studies with various end dates, meaning that if the money doesn’t come through for some reason on one, that deficit has to be made up somehow through others or through new funding. If we can’t make it up in time, jobs will be eliminated.
I used to work at a state run, fed and state funded health institution. To change the status quo, the administrative idiots running these institutions have to be removed. They did not get an order to stop funding Medicaid - they got an order to reform Medicaid and are refusing to do so. They will sow chaos and blame Trump's order - "I was afraid that I'd make a mistake so we just quit funding everything" - in an effort to stop reform. That is their nature. So it will be painful and people will pay the price but the administrative status quo absolutely has to change.
Sure, I don’t disagree that some of this is self-imposed. But even when asked during a press conference if Medicaid was safe, the White House said they’d have to check in on it. Clarity is needed to avoid unnecessary fear and damage, and to avoid leaders making poor decisions and then blaming it on the administration.
I'm curious what folks here think of Trump's apparent desire to annex Greenland, and (through economic power) Canada. How serious do you think he is, and would you support him, if he did?
He doesn't want to 'annex' Greenland, he wants to BUY it and he's had one threatening conversation with the Danish prime minister about it already. We know Trump's several bulbs short of a full chandelier and it's clear he hasn't realized we already have Arctic property - with lots of minerals - within whistling range of Russia. It's called Alaska. And if he's threatening to invade Greenland, then NATO would have to rush to Denmark's defense. Against us.
I am on 2 FB groups with Greenlanders, so am listening in on some of the translated repartee and no one wants to become part of the USA. However they are very much enjoying the increased attention they're getting from Denmark over this.
Thanks for the clarification.
Far as I can tell, Trump wants Greenland not only for the strategic minerals, but also (and probably moreso) because as the Arctic melts, Greenland sits on a strategic shipping route.
Apparently we've been trying to buy Greenland for a while, starting with the guy who got us Alaska:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/greenland-us-purchase-history-wwii
Also, my understanding is that Greenland has been mostly ours in practice anyway since around the Cold War, and Trump—with his usual disdain for subtext—is mostly just saying the quiet part out loud. And always remember, he stakes out maximalist opening positions; that's how he negotiates. People should stop being surprised by it at this point.
We have had a military base at Thule, Greenland since 1941. Denmark had fallen to the Germans in 1940.
Your point?
William Henry Seward was the most famous Republican in the country but he was defeated for the presidential nomination by Lincoln.
Apparently he went on to become Lincoln's secretary of state; didn't know that. So he remained in that office after Lincoln's death, and that's when he bought Alaska. Got it.
Canada is a troll. Greenland is fun. The Panama Canal is real.
Yup—that sums it up.
I know Canada is a troll but it was a small mistake in that it helped seal Trudeau's fate. It was in America's interest to have Trudeau remain leader of the Liberal Party into the parliamentary elections in the fall. I truly wished for a Conservative landslide that would crush the Liberals. Now, with Trudeau on his way out, the Liberals will pick a new leader- probably Chrystia Freeland- and the Canadian press will provide the new leader a great amount of support. A landslide is now in doubt.
I'd actually like to see a coalition government of revived Social Credit and New Democrats (but a New Democratic Party purges of DEI obsessions). Conservatives are just going to be another whirl of the merry go round. However, I'm not a Canadian citizen, so I don't get a vote on the matter.
and its Panama's.
Rod, why are you still defending Father Carlos Martins on twitter? His lawyers lied about what happened. He put the hair of a 13-year-old girl in his mouth. He is a freak. Stop defending him. Unless you have proof that all those kids are lying.
The Arctic isn't going to melt anytime soon.
If the Arctic is melting, that means climate change is real, something Trump denies.
I think "Climate change isn't real" is more shorthand for: "Climate change isn't the catastrophe that the wokists claim it is, and it doesn't require us to reorganize our entire social and economic life at national scale." Their framing of the thing isn't real.
If the threat of the ice caps melting were immanent I would think that no bank would fund a mortgage in the areas potentially affected. There's obviously some deception going on.
Insurance companies are refusing in many cases to allow people in western NC after Helene because their property is now in a flood plain. I do think climate change alarmism is overblown but we need to be good stewards of God’s creation & not pollute the air with too many greenhouse gases. And the world’s average temperature is going up. Ironically the severe cold in the eastern & southern US is because the warming Arctic is causing the jet stream to dip far south, carrying cold Siberian air from polar regions.
"We know Trump's several bulbs short of a full chandelier..." Do we? Not this week.
Republicans are accusing the U.S. Air Force of “malicious compliance” with one of the president’s executive orders.
It was so broad and imprecise that once you comply with it Trump and the Republicans get mad.
They knew damned well what was expected of them and chose to frustrate the process. It didn’t turn out well for the saboteurs. Everyone is onto these tricks now.
Sounds sensible. the Danish prime minister is lucky to have been on the other end of the phone, unlike Benes at Berchtesgaden.
From an outsider’s perspective, if the Greenlanders are in agreement I’ve no issue with the US gaining control there. Danes may disagree because it could feel like they are losing face on the international stage but they would be better being involved in the discussion otherwise they are likely to lose out on any settlement.
On the Canada front, I’ve a degree of schadenfreude - it’s been such a hot mess of liberal nonsense from Trudeau for so long it’s kinda nice to see them squirm. Hopefully it’ll bolster the right and we’ll see them stand up for themselves as partners rather than subjects.
To be honest, I kinda wish Trump would aim to annex the UK and Ireland next- before Two-Tier can complete the ruination of the entire country.
Re Canada, this makes a few dubious points and is a bit overlong, but is worth a read:
https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2025/01/lament-for-a-post-national-canada/
Still better, read Grant himself.
Indeed!
I don't think Denmark fears "losing face" but instead only wants to protect Greenland's status of a largely self-governing nation.
If I'm not mistaken, Denmark and Ukraine signed some sort of mutual defense treaty, probably mostly symbolic, but it's possible that Ukraine would rush its battalions from Donetsk to aid the Danes when we launch a big arrow offensive from Thule Air Base to seize Greenland.
Given the disdain the Eurocrats have for the US in general and Trump in particular, I very much doubt the danish politicians would want to give him a ‘win’ - whatever would Brussels say? Next thing you know he’ll be liberating Catalonia from the Castilian yoke!
I don't want to get Canada. I don't want Canadians to be allowed to vote in US elections. They would ruin us.
Republicans would never win another election whether Canada added one state or 10 plus 3 territories.
Here’s what will happen if Trump annexes Greenland:
https://samkriss.substack.com/p/theres-someone-on-the-ice
I'd rather share a country with a nujaqaq than a Cluster-B wokist.
Well, my friend, you’ll soon be sharing a country with both.
Trump is rather impulsive most of the time and he's at his worst with his wish to buy Greenland as if he was Seward buying Alaska from the Czar of Russia in 1867. Greenland is a peculiar case. It is a semi-independent nation of 58,000 that relies on Denmark to subsidize its government, run its foreign affairs and run its defense affairs. America has had a military base at Thule, Greenland since 1941. Trump should drop his wish to purchase Greenland from Denmark as Greenland isn't Denmark's to sell. What Trump should negotiate is an economic treaty where American companies can develop and exploit the mineral-rich interior of Greenland. If America needs another military base in Greenland, that can be negotiated as well.
I’ve been to Greenland. I ‘d be perfectly content to see the status quo maintained. My concern is this, what happens if it becomes independent? It’s simply not viable as an independent country. Greenland definitely can not defend itself. It can’t support itself. It needs a foreign patron . I’m fine with it being Denmark. What I don’t want is it being Russia or China. That’s the context in which what Trump says makes a certain amount of sense. Granted the bullying bluster is totally uncalled for. But there’s a situation here that needs to be monitored. An independent Greenland would only work if it were closely tied to the US or Canada. As for Canada, it was very funny listening to Trump patronizing Trudeau. But Canada has no interest in becoming part of the US . I don’t want Canada to become part of the USA because it would be bad for all concerned.So frankly, on this point Trump should cool it.
See, if he *starts off* by saying he wants to buy Greenland, then something like what you're proposing is probably where we'll end up. That's how the game works.
Thank you, Sethu for stating the obvious!
Yes, but the thing is it's not really obvious to a whole lot of people.
Trump starts by asking for the stars but will settle for then moon - which is all he really wanted to begin with. As for Greenland, I think chances are good he'll get what he really wants, and it will be to our best interests.
Another good thing about Trumps approach to things is that he gets people thinking about things in a new light. Speaking of which - It's not that he's short a few bulbs in the chandelier, it's that he's replacing bulbs that had already burned out a long time ago.
Correct and I wish more people (particularly most news media) understood the point you're making.
Many people’s paychecks depend on their not admitting various truths. I’m actually curious to know how much of the GDP is generated from outright lies.
Yes! People can't get it through their heads to "take Trump seriously but not literally". They also don't get the dialect and approach of a NYC real estate mogul.
I’d love Greenland to be a part of the USA. Why not? Canada 🇨🇦 is worthless. We have enough wack-a-doodle leftists already.
Greenland is full of alcoholic Eskimos and votes very leftist I assume.
The Alcoholic Eskimos sounds like a punk rock band.
It signifies that the man is certifiably psychotic. This has not been under discussion by anyone, including Trump, until shortly before be was sworn in, when he did his usual "a stray thought crossed my mind, let me bray it forcefully to the world and puff up my chest" performance. IF either Russia or China, or for that matter Brazil, was seeking to occupy Greenland, we could make the same arrangement we made with Iceland during WW II. Otherwise, its a lot of hype and hot air, but Trump has always been about promoting himself and basking in the imagined applause.
(For anyone who wants to retort with a string of criticisms of Kamala Harris or the Democratic Party, most or all of which I probably agree with...
https://open.substack.com/pub/citizenhistorian/p/the-dnc-is-donald-trumps-best-friend?r=2r4gvi&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Well, the Finns already chastened the Russians... so, unless Trump wants to nuke them, I wouldn't underestimate the Northerners... :D
Today's news is that almost all federal employees have been offered a buyout package. That, plus some of the recent firings (at DOJ, among OIGs etc) will do much to upend stultifying bureaucracy.
Don't expect these victories to proceed without a lot of lawsuits. Today several federal employees have sued regarding the new ability of the President to send email to all federal employees, claiming that this violates their privacy. Unbelievable--I can't think of ANY company or corporation that would tolerate that.
In any case, given our massive federal debt and swollen spending (if we were to return to pre-COVID levels, there would not be a meaningful deficit, btw), these measures will help DOGE and the brilliant Russ Vought devise approaches to move back from an the current fiscal cliff, before we reach the point of no return.
I, like many that have followed these developments for some time, in detail, and supported Pres. Trump, am quite pleased with his actions so far. Sure that many here that despise him will disagree. Their privilege to do so.
Can you spare Elon to sort out the NHS when he’s done with the feds? At this rate he’ll probably be finished by Easter.
Think RFK Jr has some ideas for NHS and for that matter, all of HHS. Our medical system has lots of opportunity for improvement, including cost savings--maybe as much as $1T without resorting to the long wait times/rationalizing treatment model of UK and Canada.
If RFK would stick to the task of fighting luridly high healthcare costs I'd cheer for him. But if he goes on a crusade against vaccines (one of the chief reasons for the soaring life expectancies in the 20th century and rock bottom child mortality) or on some crazy health food bender then he's a quack and a crank.
Though there may either be a subgroup of children who are susceptible to vaccines, or a response of some to the increased number of vaccines (or specific vaccines such as Hep B) given.
At least its worth asking the question and studying more rigorously.
https://sharylattkisson.com/2016/11/what-the-news-isnt-saying-about-vaccine-autism-studies/
Sure. But the quesyion has been asked and research has been done and...nothing.
There are mixed results as the link shows. If the data is so solid, then a comprehensive study will be confirmatory. But, given the link, it is possible that the science is not “settled.”
It is always worth asking questions, studying more rigorously, and adjusting treatment based on individual biochemistry. Its when political factions start demanding all or nothing because they want to score brownie points that it becomes a problem -- no matter which ideology or faction is pushing what template.
You obviously haven't read him on the subject (surprise, surprise). He is not against vaccines per se; he is troubled by their overuse, by the fact that negative aspects of some of them are ignored, and by the fact that many have been mandated without significant attention being paid to those negatives.
How would you distinguish the effects of vaccines versus improved sanitation and antibiotics as affecting life expectancy and child mortality?
By the collapse in death and morbidity stats for the specific diseases against which vaccination is commonly done.
By the death rate from specific infections for which we now have vaccines, and counting up how many children were hospitalized, or died, from those specific infections after vaccines were introduced. Its not complicated. Dr. Carter G. Woodson, for instance, lost two siblings to whooping cough, before vaccines were available.
His siblings died before there were antibiotics available, so that doesn't answer my question. I'm not debating the efficacy of many vaccines, by the way, just curious about attributing all improvements to them.
Antibiotics have no effect on viruses. Vaccines are used against viruses.
Of course you've never considered actually reading anything the man has written for himself or sitting down to hear him explain at length the why and how he came to the conclusions he did. If you did that, you'd have to take responsibility for the knowledge and you wouldn't get to remain blissfully ignorant and able to make your holier- than- thou pronouncements about something you knee nothing about.
RFK is just another of the many, many subjects you prefer to remain ignorant about.
After all who is a better health expert than a heroin addict?
He’s a liar.
RFK is not against vaccines. he is very clear about that.
he is critical of the incentives granted to vaccine manufacturers as well as their overall overuse and toxic adjuvants (most likely due to legal protection from liability).
I have read RFK, starting 20 years ago. His writings are full of gross misinformation. to put it mildly. (Check the history of his infamous essay in Rolling Stone in 2005 when he was pushing "vaccines cause autism," an utterly refuted theory that his "Health" organization was still pushing, as of last year. and claiming thimerosal was poisoning children when it had been gone from all children's vaccines for four years and had never been in most of them.
RFK is claiming he's not anti-vax now, when it will help him get confirmed but he has a long track record of saying such things as "No vaccine is safe" or "polio vaccine killed more people than it saved." And how about his little expedition to Samoa during a measles epidemic there when he campaigned against the taking the measles vaccine. Dozens of children (and no few adults) died because their parents listened and didn't permit them to be vaccinated. Measles is not a trivial disease. It was the biggest killer of non-battlefield deaths during the Civil War. Before the vaccine was adopted, 500 American children a year died--out of a smaller population. Thousands suffered impairment of eyes, ears, or brain. And by the way, antibiotics are useless against a virus.
How many of you predate the polio vaccine? Do you remember seeing people crippled or hearing of other's dead from polio? It's been driven back to a few reservoirs in Pakistan and nearby areas where medics get murdered for trying to vaccinate.
RFK's statements on fluoridated water are tort lawyer-speak and grossly misleading. "The dose makes the poison," people! And as for denying that he'll take vaccines away, he'll cancel the Federal program that settles vaccine complaints, thus exposing the few vaccine manufacturers left to ruinous lawsuits until no vaccines are manufactured here. The man is a dangerous fanatic with a Khmer Rouge mind. He would never have acquired so much influence had his name been "smith" instead of Kennedy. Shall we keep him away from the levers of health power or do we wait around a count corpses?
Seen small pox recently? Oh where did it go? It's been exterminated in the wild by vaccination. The last person to die of it was a baby whose parents wouldn't permit him to be vaccinated.
He’s also pro choice with no restrictions, an environmental extremist, and called the NRA a terrorist organization. (I used to be an NRA member; they’re not terrorists, just massive grifters). These points of view used to be anathema to conservatives. But Trump decides Bobby Brainworm is his man for HHS & people who claim to be prolife & pro 2nd Amendment fall in line. Ditto Tulsi Gabbard. She was a Bernie Sis a few years ago & visited Assad in Syria a couple times. Russia Today TV channel called her “our girlfriend Tulsi”. They may have changed some of their left wing positions but if so, they haven’t said so.
look, I don’t agree with him on every issue at all. he has some boilerplate green energy beliefs that are bat-shit crazy like most all green energy thinking. I am trying to be accurate to what he says about his goals concerning HHS. what do you mean by “Kyhmer Rouge” mindset? do you really believe that he wants to kill millions?
I literally had never heard of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from the time he was arrested in South Dakota after a plane he was on as a passenger had to make an emergency landing due to his heroin overdoes crisis, until he declared he was running for president.
Who better for President and HHS Secretary than a heroin addict?
If the president is emailing to their PERSONAL accounts, they are quite right. My last job, although as an on-call on-staff temp for various projects, we were told to keep ALL work related matter on our work related email, and use it only from an employer-provided, certified and monitored device. (Hillary Clinton got in trouble for doing government work on what was essentially a personal server, no?)
My understanding is that these are gov't emails.
They could be. If they are, then government employees have no business complaining that the chief executive contacting them via these emails is an invasion of privacy. The problem I have with almost all position papers, manifestos, social media posts, debating points, is that people all over the spectrum are sloppy with their language.
If you think Trump used poor judgment in exercising a power he does have, its not a constitutional issue. Write to your congress critter. If Trump attempted to exercise a power the constitution does not given him, its a case for the courts.
The radical-feminist take on online Christian men vs. women is funny, but I don’t think it means all that much. It doesn’t prove stronger Christian community between the women than the men. Rather, it just reflects how each sex socializes in that space with peers.
Most online male behavior like that is just banter: men tend to socialize by skewering each other. Women, on the other hand, will schmooze and praise each other online—“Oh, it’s lovely! Where did you get it?”—but skewer each other later in private chats.
Nothing new under the sun, I’d say.
Sure, there remain unhelpful Christian denominational squabbles, but I suspect the online chad battles recounted are 1) exaggerated, and 2) not really driven by ire, but by the itch to banter.
There is also a very large amount of selection bias.
As I was thinking the same thing, you won't be surprised when I say, "Well said".
No, living by lies is not over! Trump is the most pathological liar ever to sit in the Oval Office- either that or he's utterly delusional and should be removed via the 25th Anendment with President Vance taking the helm. (Vance is a man I do trust to be honest and ethical, at least by political standards) Folk here lapping up Trumpian lies like cats with milk remind me of the oohing and aahing over the emperor's new clothes.
This will not end well unless God is merciful and old man Trump's life thread is snipped by fate and nature.
I'll take it that he isn't growing on you, then. Ah well. Anyway, I'm pleased that we have now identified Trump's spirit animal, with the hair and all.
Do Christians believe in spirit animals? I thought the Catholic Church ranked that as superstition.
I can call it a figure of speech, if that makes them feel better.
Them? I thought you were Catholic!
Well, I guess there are Catholics who go on sleepless hunts after all things they regard as animist or pagan ("them"), and then there are those who take the stuff in good poetic and syncretic fun—my kind of folk.
Trump’s a bullsh*tter; he’s not a liar. There’s an important difference. Today’s American “liberal” is practically defined by not being able to understand this.
He's also just a fat-mouthed New Yorker. He becomes easy to understand if you (generic you) try to learn the *idiom* instead of just continually insisting contrary to all facts that he uses language in the way you believe it must be used.
as another man from Queens, I endorse this comment ;)
Wouldn’t it be easier to write ‘one’?
Sometimes, but it can get stuffy and awkward depending on what else is going on in the sentence.
When Trump announced, in his usual fashion, 'there's not going to be a hurricane in Alabama,' while the NOAA was providing detailed warnings of an approaching hurricane, some flunky on the White House staff intoned that the NOAA should not be issuing reports that contradict the President of the United States. Was he lying, or just bullshitting?
Neither. He was offering his opinion about the forecast. Predictions lie outside of the categories of “true” and “false”, and therefore “lies”.
He was not offering his opinion at all. He was offering his heartfelt desire as a guarantee, and he was dead wrong. Trump responds this way to every disaster, including COVID. First, he says nothing is happening. Then he says we've got it all under control, and nothing is going to happen. Then he says "Nobody could have seen this coming." He's like a child covering his eyes and saying "Make it go away, I don't like it." The NOAA takes measurements, posts those measurements, gives parameters for what is likely to happen, and what does happen generally falls within those parameters. There really was a hurricane headed for Alabama. It was not speculation. This is why Trump can't be trusted, whether you call it lying or bullshitting or juvenile temper tantrums.
And EVERYBODY knew there was a hurricane headed for Alabama. Trump was bullsh*tting with those comments. NO ONE relied on Trump’s comments for their safety or any other practical concern. What Trump was doing was expressing, in his own inarticulate way, confidence that things would work out. The president, like Canute, does not control Nature, and everyone knows that.
What is actionable here is criticism of Trump as a liar. That criticism reveals who exactly his opposition is. And the quality of their mindset.
It’s the same reason secular liberals laugh at people invoking thoughts and prayers after a tragedy. The seculars actually think people who pray are submitting some sort of bureaucratic request to the Butler Lord. What these people cannot comprehend is HOPE. Because they are optimists.
You knew he was bullshitting, but did he? Did the White House staff? Were the staff at NOAA confident of keeping their jobs. When a White House staff member lectures them that they should not contradict the president's bullshit with data and analysis, we are on very shaky ground.
I've heard that line before, and it avoids the problem that a BSer is still a serial liar, just one with good intentions and a fragile ego. A normal liar is simply that - a mercenary who uses lies as convenient to his own ends, and doesn't care that he's lying (he's not fooling himself, nor is he trying).
A BSer, though, lies for the sake of a good story, and often believes even his own nonsense in the moment. His ego is wrapped up in needing people to like him, and his own need to like himself. But BSers are constantly leaving messes behind for others to clean up - broken hearts, empty bank accounts, ruined lives, ruined businesses, and miles of empty promises. I speak from experience here with several in my family. They're fun at parties - they're not fun to live with. He may fool even himself for long stretches, but he's still constantly avoiding the truth, and still dissembling, and then BSing anew when the old lies have finally piled too high - just so long as he can keep spinning tales that puff up his own vanity, and keep his appeal high to others. Nothing is ever his fault - either someone else caused him to fail, or if you nail down the lie he'll squirm out and claim it's your fault for not being more careful.
Fair summary.
At least you know when someone is a BSer. Anybody relying on Trump for hurricane forecasts is not a competent adult.
Sadly, not always, particularly if the BS is also playing to your own hopes and dreams. If you're already skeptical of a BSer, you've got your guards up. But if this person is a close relative, or someone your really admire, or is amplifying something you wish was true, the BS can be harder to spot. I agree that anyone relying on Trump for hurricane forecasts is not exercising sound judgement, but that Trump felt compelled to issue such a prognostication shows the problem with the personality trait - easier to fudge and be liked for "meaning well" than give a hard truth. He wanted to be liked and trusted in that moment, and make people hopeful, so he BSed. It's not a good reflex when under pressure, and while that one was easy to roll one's eyes at, people have relied on other BS promises and declarations from him and been burned.
BSing might be less directly caustic than actual pathological lying (e.g. Obama, Clinton), but we shouldn't give it pass.
Well, no, it’s not to be approved. But it’s best to consider people like Trump less as moral agents than as natural phenomena that must be worked into one’s calculations. My comments are about how we should react to Trump. And I say that complaining about politicians’ lying is not a sign of a mature mind. There is nothing true about Biden. The man is ontologically mendacious. But once we understand that, then we can get down to the work of figuring out how policy will play out.
"Ontologically mendacious"! Love that turn of phrase.
Biden - the man who told so many lies it was hard to tell when he was senile.
Competition for the Most Pathological Liar to ever sit in the Oval Office includes Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. TDS has affected your ability to make intelligent judgements, Jon. And I'm curious if you think the 25th Amendment should have been used to remove Joe Biden, since it is now crystal clear that he was unable to perform the duties of President from early in his term.
All presidents lie. They MUST. Deception is a critical tool in their art. Facile moralizing about this is simply tedious and jejune.
Well, I think the case could be made that Biden was delusional rather than a liar, insofar as his grip on reality was tenuous and he might have actually believed the things he said.
How far back do his delusions go? I have lived in Delaware for many years and he has always been a liar as far as I know.
Yes. Even when young, Biden was a liar. Plagiarism in university. Plagiarized the speeches of Neil Kinnock of the British Labour Party in the late 80s.
Why not both? Lying and delusional?
In turns? The idea is that you're not technically lying if you sincerely believe in what you're saying; you'd just be mistaken, possibly to a delusional extent.
It's an endless spiral, really. Biden told so many lies in his life, even when he didn't NEED to do so, even when he was younger and not senile, that I wondered at his sanity.
Sure it does. Maybe we could send Trump, Clinton, Biden, Harris, to a remote island for a Most Pathological Liar Reality Series. Then leave them there.
Tell them to build a boat - the results would be hilarious.
Possibly your most unhinged and awful comment, Jon. And that’s saying something!
You have reached Kathy Griffin territory with this wishing for Trump’s death.
Not really. I feel the same way about Bergoglio.
They are very similar to each other - Trump and Bergoglio. Both have gotten to be leaders and both are violently shaking and fracturing their church / country.
Do note that I specified Fate and Nature, and not any uuman agency. It takes no superbly foresight to see that any such action wpuld lead to even worse results.
Nor do I think a Christian can licitly pray for any death. Except perhaps a quick and easy death for someone dying slowly and in great pain.
I may have misconstrued your words. Truly curious: Do you support any of the Trump EOs?
Curious, what Trumpian lies are folks here lapping up?
The LAPTOP John!!! The LAPTOP!!!
Trump told the truth, and Biden, along with his fifty former intelligence offers confirming the LAPTOP was Russian disinformation, lied. Had Biden not told that whopper during a nationally televised debate, and the media spread the lie even further, there never would have been a January 6th!
Cope
JonF311 this is a free forum, so you can say that which you want to say within Rod's broad range of moderation. Most of us here don't agree with you, and what is more we are relieved to have Trump in office, and not just in office, but taking substantive and courageous actions daily, that in just 9 days since his inauguration, are producing changes that we did not consider possible. We focus on his actions, and not much on his rhetoric. We are done with high falutin rhetoric that soars, but leads to naught for the average American. No need to reply, but, perhaps, if you must, please use all caps so we know how you feel, since you can't gesticulate and raise your voice here to try and make your point.
Good grief get ahold of yourself man!
Well done! The pot is stirred...
I wouldn't say "most pathological liar". Clinton and Obama set the bar very very very high.
If Trump was a tarot card he'd be the Death Card. Don't fear the reaper.
The Tower is the worst one.
And the Death Card is a positive, but it can be hard to see that if you fear radical upheval.
I would put Trump as the Devil (bondage to the material world), or yes, The Tower.
Of course you would.
I hope wokeness is going to disappear at the federal level, but it's going to take a long time to go away on the ground. I hate social media and have never participated in it, but my GenZ daughter does. She made a simple comment on some news Facebook page supporting ICE going into churches and schools to get criminals, and within a day or two, she had been doxed, her post had gone viral, and people (outside our little town) were calling for her to lose her job as a teacher. They said they would protest if she wasn't fired. She also received a death threat, and we had to call in the police. She's on paid leave right now, and the school seems to be supportive, since she didn't do anything illegal, but it's been a nightmare. I can't believe what a woke online mob can do. Agree or disagree (and everyone has the right to disagree) but every American has the right to speak their opinion. But it's still a case of woe to those who have conservative views. She realizes now what a mistake it was, but she had no idea one comment, without even her name attached, could spiral out of control. I would appreciate any prayers for her.
Yes, but it was no worse than a mistake.
I’m praying that God will bring her through this. This is an incredibly frustrating time to be a teacher but we need good conservatives like her in the schools.
I thought conservatives supported churches being places of refuge. This is news to me that conservatives want law enforcement going into churches to take people out.
I would not want my church to be a place of refuge for murderers, pedophiles, and drug dealers.
What happened to your daughter was awful but ICE should not conduct raids in places of worship or schools. As far as I know, they haven't yet and it's unlikely that they will. Of course, there could be a situation where local law enforcement involvement might be necessary but that would be on a case-by-case basis. As it stands, students are arrested all the time in schools by school resource officers for various criminal transgressions but almost always with the cooperation of the school administration. Let's not make school attendance even more stressful for students and staff by having ICE show up when there are less intrusive options available.
We know from previous years who was given refuge at church and it was not “murderers, pedophiles and drug dealers”. Please stop making things up.
Well definitely pedophiles…it just happened to be the priests and bishops themselves.
Church as sanctuary was a medieval reality. Not sure it endured in the post enlightenment era in a consistent way.
It didn't endure anywhere, in fact. It was abolished in most polities that turned Protestant at the Reformation, and where it was not abolished immediately (e.g., England) it was severely curtailed (in 1540) and finally abolished (in 1623).
It’s actually about removing perverse incentives for illegal immigrants to specifically hide out in those places when they know they’re being sought. The new policy still requires ICE agents to seek approvals from higher up before going in and I expect it will not be common, especially once it becomes known that those places are not beyond ICE’s reach.
Priests will still hide them and protect them.
This isn't the holocaust, nobody is sending them off to death camps. It's more like sending people from West Virginia back to West Virginia. Sure there's lots of poverty in Latin America, but those countries aren't in famine or civil war, AND they and their kids are way more likely to STAY Catholic.
That last point - about staying Catholic - is important.
Then you should give that more consideration.
I saw somewhere that people who were deported to their home countries were telling people not to come here illegally, it’s not worth the risk. This could do a lot to stem the tide, hopefully.
The first planeload of Colombians landed in Bogota yesterday. Honestly, they seemed relieved to be back.
What did you expect? They are full of hate and so of course they support law enforcement raiding churches.
Social media is awful. To be honest I kind of think these kinds of online mobbings just come with the territory (not that that’s a good thing). I was once mobbed, on a thankfully much smaller scale (it did not go viral outside of a particular social circle) for a nuanced Facebook comment in which I critiqued an article posted by a college friend whose basic thesis was that women who’d had career success but weren’t happy or satisfied with their success were proof of workplace sexism. I was soon attacked, upbraided and harangued by all of my friend’s female friends, none of whom I knew personally. A few of them had substantive issues with my critique. Most of them just resorted directly to ad hominem and browbeating. It was stressful and unpleasant and was a contributing factor to my later decision to delete my Facebook account (11 years ago, and I’ve never looked back - free yourself!).
Shame is a tool of social control that plays a necessary role in how human communities regulate themselves. In its proper role, it’s a behavioral corrective and a tool for enforcing social peace. As applied over the internet however, I think it’s more destructive than helpful. It is however a very fundamental bit of human psychology that I doubt we’ll ever be able to resist making use of. As long as there are humans on the internet, I think we will see this type of mob shaming. The only thing that will change will be what things people get attacked for saying or doing. Today it’s not being deferent to the Woke. Tomorrow it might be not being sufficiently anti-Woke.
I’m sorry this happened to your daughter. I think this sort of thing is a bit like being struck by lightning - it’s rare but it does actually happen to people, and there are things you can do to reduce the risk, like not posting about politics or other divisive topics and making sure you have strong privacy settings that limit who can see and interact with your posts (I have never understood why so many people who aren’t trying to be influencers allow strangers to view their social media posts).
Thank you for your thoughts. She did have privacy settings on her Facebook page and Instagram account (where the death threat was posted), but people have ways of doxing that I don't understand because I have nothing to do with social media. Anyway, her original post was not even linked to her private Facebook account and didn't have her name.
I didn’t know you could comment anonymously on Facebook. I simply ignore posts I don’t agree with rather than commenting.
Internet hate is cheap to make and spread, sadly. And while most of it is ultimately chaff (angry people at keyboards who will never do anything), that 1 person out of 10,000 who means it is enough.
Ex-liberal here, driven off by DEI but unwilling to sign up for MAGA. Ruthless, honey badger purging of liberals and progressives from the federal government and its network of allied institutions seems like it will create an awful lot of bitterness and rage and contempt, not just among leftist activists but among their friends, family, and associates who don't share ludicrous woke beliefs. Facing job loss has a tendency to induce terror. Even if doing things like ending federal funding for "the Groups" (leftist NGOs) is justified on moral and policy grounds, conducting that as a campaign of punishment for woke excesses doesn't encourage disaffected former liberals to come over to a "Big Tent" GOP or postliberal culture. It just encourages them to wallow in fear. That's not a recipe for encouraging enemies to give up and go along with the new world. That's what it seems like to me, anyway.
Although I voted for Trump this time around, I don't consider myself MAGA. I think you make some very good points here. Trump has used a machete where a scalpel would have been more helpful. Well....maybe not a scalpel, but a good sharp carving knife.
Yeah, I think that says it more succinctly and better than I just did, thank you!
No, no -- you fleshed it out well. I just summarized! LOL
When clearing a path in the administrative jungle, a machete is always preferred.
See Eric's comments above.
Largely agreed. But the question is where to carve. Do you want the parts you haven’t carved yet still around to react?
Millei too—he didn’t opt for a hobby shop hand saw.
Millei has actually been far more careful and clever than his image suggests. He has accomplished a lot, but he doesn’t have the luxury of controlling the Argentine Congress so he’s had to maneuver carefully to co-opt potential opponents and avoid uniting the other parties against him.
It’s not in Trump’s rhetorical arsenal, but I think he’d do well to take a page from Millei and say to the American populace: “We mean to deliver, but this is going to involve some discomfort.”
Such an approach might be necessary not far down the road.
Yes I had the same thought when he started all this.
Maybe, if the deficit is not reigned in and we end up in a major fiscal crisis. We are far from the kind of straights Argentina was in, however. At the moment I do not think the electorate would be very accepting of the kinds of dislocations the Argentines are currently tolerating.
When it comes to dealing with the wokists, though, I could get behind an ethos of total war and salting the earth. These people are conniving and won't go quietly; they do need to be purged from every position of power, and in a way that would make it more difficult for them to regroup. Trump's probably doing what's necessary, having learned from their obstructionism the last time around.
Maybe, but the optics suck if you're not MAGA.
The optics suck. And this is a big problem.
Many moderates object to what they see as “excesses” the Democratic Party has fallen into. They don’t recognize that these excesses are part of a coherent new mode of governance, one that’s slowly entrenched itself across the West, just getting its roots down, and one that, if not thoroughly routed now, will certainly return and proceed to the next predictable stages, which I hope I never see.
I suspect moderates don’t recognize this because they haven’t been on the receiving end. They haven’t contemplated the tentative rollout of tactics like debanking, for instance, or the slow ratcheting up of censorship as norm. They see the wokist projects as mere over-enthusiasm, not as a tool being employed as social content over which a new illiberal order can be ushered in.
So me too, I think there likely needs to be no quarter. But much of the population won’t get why. They’ll see it as gratuitous meanness rather than a necessary seizure of territory.
I think Shrier’s piece was good on driving home what it looked like on the receiving end. And this was just Regime 1.0:
https://substack.com/@abigailshrier/p-154801629
Well, it's Trump: he can probably figure out what to do about issues of optics, can't he? That's his natural element, his home turf.
In a way, yes, but given that the big lie for years has been “Mean Orange Fascist,” it won’t be hard for those now out of a job, not to mention those NGOs now without funding cut, to come out screaming: “See, we told you, America!”
That’s why I say above that a little straightforward communication might be needed, as in: “This is going to cause pain, some dislocation, but this is the only way America returns.”
Vance will be good at this.
This is 100% right, unfortunately. I had hoped for more understanding from moderates about what has to happen to right the ship, but some recent episodes at my husband’s work are showing me that for moderate democrats and republicans, politeness really is the highest virtue. I shouldn’t be surprised, having been in “polite” Christian circles for a long time, but for some reason it’s disappointed me that otherwise reasonable people seem to find being nice and not being mean as the highest good for an organization. I assume this applies to their views on national politics, too, and explains a lot about why things were allowed to get to this point.
Exactly. And their niceness is such that they can be passive-aggressively bullied into a new variety of authoritarianism. Which, given decades of left dominance in our universities, is the default meaning of “democratic” in the minds of most “educated” people under 40.
And many, many over 40.
When we’ve reached such heights of insanity and rejection of reality, should we be catering to enablers because optics, tiptoeing around their feelings with half measures, or is it high time for some tough love?
After we annex Canada, we could round up all our most polite people and send them over there, where they'd feel like they belong.
A Canadian family we know ended up with a fugitive on their farm after they busted him for littering on their property. True story. Don't mess with Canada.
I see this problem too, though through a slightly different lens. Erasing so many jobs at once gives all these basically career activists nothing to do but set to work networking and organizing. Which is what they do *as a profession*. It creates, a few months down the line, a very angry and well networked wave of pushback.
Still, I don’t think these EOs are “punishment”. Rather, it’s a matter of a pre-emptive strike. Trump and his people know from experience that nothing will get done if state agencies are staffed with people set on foot-dragging and obstruction. So the choice is to get as many out of government as possible. Now.
Still, it may have been wiser to weaken this beast in stages. I’m just not sure how that would work. How it could be implemented.
In any case, this time around, there is strategy behind Trump’s moves. His team is much larger, savvier, and they have weighed their battlefield options. So perhaps they’re *counting on* a huge wave of activism come spring, thinking that the public will side with them against the protesters.
Real liberals, like yourself I assume, realize that our “liberals” had left liberalism far behind. They’d betrayed core principles in favor of social engineering. Censorship, CRT racism, erasure of the idea of borders—none of it is liberal.
As for people in favor of this kind of social engineering, they need to see what they’ve become. Like most Americans, I don’t want to be in any tent that includes them. I support classical liberal politics, not identity war.
This country was governed by patronage until 1880, and financed by tariffs until 1913 (excepting the income tax imposed to pay for the Civil War).
I see your point and I also don't consider myself MAGA, but, I think this is awesome!
The government sort of reminds me of the stock room of a retail store. Every time something new comes in you just shove things over and make room and pretty soon you can't find anything. However, once a year or so, you have to take inventory. Everything gets taken out and counted, the store shuts down, and it's a hotter mess than it was before you started inventory. It's a pain in the rear and everyone hates it. But, once you are finished, the stock room and the store are beautiful and organized, the empty packaging and other bits of trash are gone and you can find things again.
We've never, to my knowledge, taken inventory of the government, we just keep shoving stuff onto the shelves until you don't even know what's there anymore.
Certainly, I'm reserving judgement until we see how this all shakes out, I don't think less than 2 weeks is enough time to say one way or another.
What a lovely analogy! I need to do this right now in my pantry. Nothing has a right to be in there unless I decide it’s worth being put back in. I don’t understand why government jobs are seen with such entitlement.
Just from denominational house cleaning in such bodies as the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the SBC, they can be brutal. Families are divided, careers are lost. Most leadership don’t have the heart for it. There is inevitably collateral damage. Trump is unique in having the heart for it. We’ll see what the results are, but from the above examples, it seems like life-long resentment, backlash, and new divisions are part of the deal.
There’s some truth in this but, just as with money, there is a time value of power. Trump has 4 years. As in his first administration, a insiders who slow walk his policies can run out the clock without even trying that hard (after all, government staff are not known for their alacrity at the best of times).
Also, the people who organize public demonstrations and the pencil pushers who have been comfortable with their bureaucratic power for decades are not *necessarily* the same group of people. The preferred organizational strategy of the latter include committee meetings, staff memos and inter-office communiques. Even in the internet age, It will take time for them to find each other, organize, fund raise and take action.
The same doesn’t hold true for the young people at schools and NGOs who have more recent experience with large-scale protest (BLM, Gaza solidarity, etc.). But it’s harder for them to gain traction when they don’t have friends on the inside of government and public support appears to have diminished.
You're right. As one DC friend mentioned in regards to the "work from home" prohibition: many employees moved outside of the city when they were allowed to work remotely. Now living far away from the office, it's basically impossible for them to commute to the office. They will be unable to fufill this mandate to go into the office every day.
There will be some excess "meat" cut off from the "fat" with these new policies. Lets hope the current admin is rapid to mitigate such hardships.
Re the orange honey badger; was Alice Cooper prophetic?
“No more Mister Nice Guy
No more Mister Clean
No more Mister Nice Guy
They say he's sick, he's obscene
I got no friends cause they read the papers
They can't be seen with me
And I'm feelin' real shot down
And I'm, I'm gettin' mean”
(1973)
Good question. I will note that Trump didn't get punched in the nose at church, but he did get lectured by a lesbian, so....kinda close.
Reverend Smith must've been a boxer before becoming a man of the cloth.
Reminds me of a certain Argentinian who was a bouncer before he became a priest.
I think the Mars vs. Venus thing is largely an online phenomenon. We have several new young male converts in our parish (Orthodox) and a couple catechumens as well. I've seen no OrthoBro tendencies at all, and in our parish and diocese at least, the priests and the bishop have frequently urged caution regarding "online" Orthodoxy.
Sometimes people rein it in in public. I can't think of a few men at my parish who are perfect gentlemen in public, but get them alone and the bro talk overflows.
Yeah, that's certainly possible, although I've not personally seen it at my parish. Even so, I think that the online nonsense probably fuels it.
Can you think of any women at your parish who are imperfect? Is there tolerance for ‘toxic femininity?’ Would anyone at your parish acknowledge the existence of such a problem?
My general ethos is to be harsh toward our own sex and charitable toward the other. At least in part, that’s based on the principle that I can only criticize what I understand. . . .
Someday someone will explain to me why the stuff that doctors do is only referred to as "care" when it relates to abortion, birth control or gender medicalization and surgeries. It seems to me that actual "care" for troubled teens who have been brainwashed into the gender cult would consist mostly of serious, compassionate mental health intervention. But that's not "care" -- it's just a new kind of "conversion therapy". I'm not a post-modern, but language does matter, and we need to reclaim this term.
“These guys confuse holiness with assholiness.”
Switch off the internet! Roll up cables!
Rod, you win the internet today.
Every once in a while you read along and stop...then think to yourself, "What a great line!"
Timothy Dolan, no liberal, helped educate Vance on his ludicrous assertion insuiuating that the US Catholic Bishops is more interested in the bottom line than in helping the migrant community. Look I know you like Vance and he is a friend of yours, but he was extremely arrogant and misguided in making that statement on Face the Nation.
Just what part of what Vance said is "ludicrous"? What he left out of course was the smarmy virtue signaling and bogus compassion when the other half of what they're looking to do is cram brown bottoms into the pews now that more and more white people are onto their clergy's depredations. You want offensive? You come to the right shop, friend.
I saw that thing with this "bishop" grandstanding at the national Cathedral. And a NYT article claiming "progressive Christians" found a voice in her. In my arguments with these types, I remind them of the inconvenient truth that they have to ignore a whole lot of Scripture for their "Mercy uber alles" doctrine to pass muster. Most of them grow frustrated, accuse me of following Trump rather than Christ and block me. I've also battled with a few "bro Christians" when I actually mention I'm ok with female pastors, but they should be judged against the same standards their male compatriots are, ie, Scripture. None of those arguments got nasty and none of them blocked me.
I make no claims to be a "moderate," btw. And I'm not looking for any of those debates, here, either. This is just what I have observed.
I will never understand people like you. Female pastors are fine, and you don’t want to discuss it here, you write.
And you want to argue the Scriptural bases of pastoral leadership with other Christians. No, I will never understand this.
As I recall, you and I have already gone round on this, too. I've thoroughly explained my position to you, and now you made it clear you completely ignored everything I said and you came charging in here looking for a repeat.
That's what I don't understand, and you also did not comprehend, or willfully ignored what I wrote above, that I did NOT want to argue it.
Would you change your mind, if we did? No? Then what's the point? Would I change my mind? Why yes, I did. Because I used to have that TRADITIION based view on it. but a really good study helped me change my mind on it. Those who stick to the traditional way look to this bishop and nod as if to say, "here's the proof," while ignoring all the rotten male pastors, including those in that bishop's denomination who agree with her.
There. That's all the argument you will get.
At the Latin Mass parish my family and I have attended since 2002, I see the husbands and wives living in marriages of romantic Christian love. Our Church is patriarchal surely but the wives are not doormats. Wives and husbands have respect for each other. Families are very large in comparison to modern American families. Most parishioners have made friends for life. Parishioners socialize before Mass and after Mass and often parishioners linger in the parking lot for a half-hour or longer if the weather permits. One family threw a party last Saturday and at least sixty parishioners attended. I usually put together one charter fishing trip each year.
The wives of my parish are not meek and submissive. All the ladies I know best will tell any man their opinion on an issue and not care that the man might not agree with them. The intelligence of the wives are greatly valued. All that our host posted about the feminist critique of Christianity is a bunch of hogwash.
Sometimes lefties and even secular conservatives are prejudiced by the outward appearances of the wives of a parish like the one my family attends. The women wear dresses and skirts which was rather normal in America until the 1960s. The wives wear veils, hats or other head coverings during Mass. The head coverings come off when the ladies leave the front doors of the church. Our wives tend to wear their hair longer than most modern women but we have women who choose to wear their hair short.
Derek. You’ve mentioned in this combox the name of your parish, though I won’t remind readers of it. If you want to, of course you may do so. One of my neighbors, a woman I like very much, is your fellow parishioner. I feel compelled to clarify, though, that it is an ‘independent Catholic’ parish not in communion with the official Roman Catholic Church. The priest was ordained in the Church, Baltimore diocese, years ago, and later joined the SSPX via ‘conditional’ ordination, then left the SSPX in a further split. I am not passing judgment on his or your status as Roman Catholics. I may visit your church one day, though I too am not what the diocesan bishop allows as Catholic. But readers here should understand. I’m not sure that it’s been made entirely clear.
You are exactly right. Father R is independent although he was ordained in the Diocese of Baltimore. Until 2015, Father R was on friendly relations with the SSPX.
Except Donald Trump is Not really Conservative. He is a moderate Republican (rhetoric aside)
Although there is The Question What Is Conservatism?
"I can't define it, but I know it when see it" Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart :-)
Hugh Hewitt
Hugh gives a crash course on the GOP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Etgr8fHXHw
Jan 28, 2025
All the different GOPs: Hugh gives a crash course in the GOP and how it is now not just GOPe but GOPe plus GOP-NT: The GOP of Nixon as changed and expanded by President Trump: The GOP of center-right common sense.
Byron York provides his overview of the GOP of 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUWjUoEioGs
Jan 28, 2025
I work in a supply house. We supply industrial, plumbing, electrical, septic systems, and pumps. I have noticed a trend over the past decade or so. We are no longer outsourcing and there has been a slow trend towards reshoring manufacturing.60-70% of what we sell is made or at least assembled here. There is a noticeable difference between Chinese and domestic products. The Chinese products will just meet standard while the domestic product often exceeds it and it just better quality. It also will tend to cost more but if you are going to be using it a lot then it is worth it. I have also seen the benefits of tariffs. I don't remember the year but in Trumps first term he put a tariff on Chinese made brass. Thanks to that we reshored our purchases because domestic production was no longer 15% higher. The playing field was level. Sadly there was only literally three domestic suppliers that I had to choose from. We reshored pex fittings and brass nipples. I do believe the domestic supplier of pex fittings has expanded. I have seen no other companies open plants here to help fill the domestic supply market on these items. Without the conscious effort to buy domestic you have about 20 options for Chinese or Indonesian made items. Just on a funny note the buyer of brass ball valves for us got so mad at China about Covid that he switched from a Chinese product to a Taiwanese product. There are domestic products out there also but only two that I know of and they are easily the superior product. I could go on and on about this issue in my field but I will wrap it up as for now.
Buying automotive tools over the years, I've noticed that the stuff from Taiwan is actually good quality.
Yes the Taiwanese ball valve is of a better quality than the Chinese variety from the same company
I have a non-digital torque wrench from Taiwan. Torquing down a flywheel bolt at 200-ft pounds with all my strength, I felt for sure either the tool or bolt would snap in half, until I heard that satisfying "click." Love that wrench.
It’s fine to celebrate the end of DEI, but let’s take a moment to recognize the sheer idiocy of how this is all being done. I work in health research and we have literally no idea when NIH will be able to continue awards. My institution is large, so I suspect we will be fine in the end, but even small delays can be crushing to smaller ones and junior investigators, etc. The vast majority of us, just like in the federal government, aren’t SJW’s, but we are the ones most terrified of what this means for our futures. The ones up top that are the purported targets of all this? They’ll be fine. They have money and connections. The rest of us? Wondering if careers dedicated to helping others is a livable future anymore. It’s not too late for Trump to fix this, but it seems like he clearly doesn’t care about the average person just trying to make a living and do good. Plus all of the research that could be lost, lives that could have been saved, etc. if this uncertainty doesn’t end soon.
My friend with two adopted kids on Medicaid? Also unsure if her kids will have health insurance anymore. And one has the flu right now.
By all means, get rid of DEI. It hasn’t even been proven to be effective, for heaven’s sake. But the collateral damage in sweeping, half baked ideas? Extraordinary.
Is this what you're talking about (from this morning's WaPo)?
The budget office put out a memo Tuesday saying Medicaid was not meant to be affected. However, state and federal officials told The Post on Tuesday that they were unable to draw down funds for Medicaid from a federal payment management system, effectively freezing the program around the country. The insurance program provides coverage to tens of millions of Americans, and state officials said they were weighing the need to halt payments to doctors and hospitals."
I started out as a reporter and "state and federal officials" is unsourced as far as I'm concerned.
I've read reports that the grants in question are funded annually, not like a paycheck. Is this your experience?
Yes on the WaPo article.
For grants, they’re typically awarded for a period of years (most of my projects are 5), but there are annual reports and some background steps on the yearly around disbursement that I’m not closely involved with that can lead to funding being pulled (my understanding is that’s pretty rare but not unheard of). I honestly don’t know if that process has been affected by all this — again, I’m not directly on the finance side so maybe someone else here could speak better on it all.
The big thing to consider is that almost no one is funded with just one grant. We’re all on multiple studies with various end dates, meaning that if the money doesn’t come through for some reason on one, that deficit has to be made up somehow through others or through new funding. If we can’t make it up in time, jobs will be eliminated.
I used to work at a state run, fed and state funded health institution. To change the status quo, the administrative idiots running these institutions have to be removed. They did not get an order to stop funding Medicaid - they got an order to reform Medicaid and are refusing to do so. They will sow chaos and blame Trump's order - "I was afraid that I'd make a mistake so we just quit funding everything" - in an effort to stop reform. That is their nature. So it will be painful and people will pay the price but the administrative status quo absolutely has to change.
Sure, I don’t disagree that some of this is self-imposed. But even when asked during a press conference if Medicaid was safe, the White House said they’d have to check in on it. Clarity is needed to avoid unnecessary fear and damage, and to avoid leaders making poor decisions and then blaming it on the administration.