The Imperial Presidency

[Jinx999]

Trump’s decided to Allow Musk’s Efficiency Team to Skirt Open Records Laws

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/us/po...=url-share

Because transparency and accountability are for peons.

[Jinx999]

Are they deliberately trying to destroy every alliance, friendly relationship and trading arrangement America has?

[classicdrogn]

Possibly, though they may just be that stupid.

[robkelk]

Are they deliberately trying to destroy every alliance, friendly relationship and trading arrangement America has?

It was pointed out to me this morning that His Orangeness buckles under when faced with the threat of actual force. Thus, he bullies his allies because he's too afraid to stand up to actual threats.

He isn't brave enough to actually defend democracy, and he has a need to be in the spotlight... so, yeah, he is deliberately trying to destroy every alliance, friendly relationship and trading arrangement America has. He doesn't have the spine to do otherwise.

[robkelk]

Allies appear to duck and cover as Trump threatens Canada and Greenland

If this were any other time, and any other country, the sort of talk we've been hearing from Trump would have drawn howls of allied and international outrage.

Canadians fought and died in Europe in two world wars, in Korea and in Afghanistan.

Our nation has been one of the most generous countries in terms of humanitarian aid, development funding and even moral support.

Yet, there has been no direct public condemnation by allied leaders and it seems — in the face of Trump — we find ourselves alone.

Why are we being left to twist in the wind, alone, after everything we as a country have done for the world?

Beyond the keep calm and carry on approach of NATO allies, there has been a deafening silence from the Commonwealth, in particular the United Kingdom, a country with which we share deep historical, social and institutional ties.

King Charles III is Canada's head of state and even he has not publicly spoken in defence of the dominion.

"The monarch would not say anything unless the Canadian government told him to say things," said Andrew Percy, a former British Conservative MP and the U.K.'s former trade envoy to Canada.

"If the government wanted him to say something, then he would."

The same argument, he said, could very well be extended to other allied nations, many of whom are looking out for their own trade relationship with the United States — or just trying to keep their head down and stay out of Trump's crosshairs.

None of them want to be next.

Oh, right.

Nice to see how our allies have got our backs. </sarcasm>


Looks like we're going to have to look out for ourselves, because nobody else is going to help us – not even people in the USA who are going to lose their jobs because of tariffs. You're all too afraid of the bully in the Big White House.

[Dartz]

If America insists on being a troll state, the answer is to not feed the trolls. The correct response to whatever stuttering trickles from their sphincters is silence

[Labster]

Yeah, the consensus is that Zelensky arguing back against our leader was a bad call.  I know it goes against every instinct as a war leader and a comedian, but telling Trump he was wrong will hurt Ukraine.  Silence is the right option for all countries.  Silence and tripling the defense budget, of course.  Silence includes not buying American goods and services.

If you've ever seen the Chairman Xi meme, "Do nothing.  Win." -- you should do that.  China is winning right now.

Anyway, just about everything that I thought was going to happen over the past.... one month has happened, which means I'm a fricking genius.  In honor of my prediction ability, I thought I'd make it a little bit harder and post my bingo card.  I don't expect everything on it will happen this year, but I do expect I'll get a bingo!


  2025-bingo-card.png (Size: 142.51 KB / Downloads: 284)

[robkelk]

If you folks don't want free trade any more, we'll just have to go it alone.

[robkelk]

Why Canada can't strip Elon Musk of Canadian citizenship

Show of hands: Did anybody know he held Canadian citizenship?

[Bob Schroeck]

Anti-Elon Musk Poster “Don’t Buy a Swasticar” in London Goes Viral

"Goes from 0 to 1939 in 3 seconds"

[Jinx999]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...gined-gaza

Trump's Gaza video.

Even by Trump standards, this is completely out of his mind.

[robkelk]

Even by Trump standards, this is completely out of his mind.

Serious question: Has he gone senile?

Not that it'll make a difference, because of the way Section 3 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution is phrased, but it'll make a lot of things easier to understand.

[Labster]

Honestly, how dare you call Trump's distractions of your attention senility.  He has got you talking about what he and his administration is saying, not what they are actually doing.  Which I have said before...

That said, building Gaz-a-Lago is yet another distraction, and yes we are at the phase where threatening genocide is a distraction.  You need to follow the money.  And that is, in fact, what Trump is doing.

The genocide proposal is a distraction!  He and his people are literally just pitching a property development with the usual assumption of "moving the undesirables" to distract you from what they actually want to do.  You and the media are distracted by the shiny.

The most important thing happening right now is a purge of the federal workforce.  The vast majority of government employees were asked to submit a report of the things they worked on last week directly to the DOGE, with the included announcement (via X) that failure to submit would be taken as a resignation.  So, uh, people aren't removed yet, but the idea of centralizing control of both government payments and performance reviews with the same agency means that they basically intend to purge large portions of the government -- primarily to keep only loyalists, but also to provide an excuse for tax cuts.  Elon has discussed a DOGE rebate for the money saved, because apparently inflation isn't high enough.

So there's that.  And then there's Elon's plan to see if the gold in Fort Knox is really there, and livestream it like Geraldo Rivera.  This is not a distraction.  It has all of the shininess of a distraction, so you might be tempted to write it off, but it's also about money.  But it's not really about the presence of the gold at all.  Actually, it's about selling bitcoin and cryptocurrency.  This wonk goes into too much detail, but basically the steps seem to be: (1) "find" gold (2) complain about how gold is (by statute) not valued at fair market value (3) increase nominal value of gold (4) use the newfound money to create a "strategic bitcoin reserve" (5) profit!

Trump's talk about Canada parrots Putin's claims on Ukraine -- I'm honestly not sure if this is a distraction or not, but it sure shows all of the signs of a leader wanting to invade, or at least wanting a client state.  The other half of it is that Trump also wants to make big military spending cuts, so I think what he really wants is a humiliating trade deal.  Just like the humiliating deal he wants with Ukraine's minerals -- I mean, for fuck's sake, all Zelensky had to do was "find" the dirt on Hunter Biden and everything would be fine, but now Trump has to teach Z a lesson about loyalty.

[Dartz]

Somebody took Trump of his meds today.
Vance has always been off hist trolley.

What a monumental shitshow.

I suppose, anyone who expected anything more. Zelenskey was never going to Kowtow or be humiliated in front of the world - not for someone who the planet and it's dog knows won't hold up their end of the bargain. The fella who asked for ammunition and not a ride isn't going to kiss the brown starfish.

Anyway, EU leaders have been quick to state their support. And, to show what strange times we're in - even Ireland is thinking of spending money on weaponry.

[Labster]

... Are we the baddies?

[robkelk]

Honestly, how dare you call Trump's distractions of your attention senility.  He has got you talking about what he and his administration is saying, not what they are actually doing.

We don't have the luxury of being able to take his words at anything other than face value.

Trump's talk about Canada parrots Putin's claims on Ukraine -- I'm honestly not sure if this is a distraction or not, but it sure shows all of the signs of a leader wanting to invade, or at least wanting a client state.  The other half of it is that Trump also wants to make big military spending cuts, so I think what he really wants is a humiliating trade deal.  Just like the humiliating deal he wants with Ukraine's minerals -- I mean, for fuck's sake, all Zelensky had to do was "find" the dirt on Hunter Biden and everything would be fine, but now Trump has to teach Z a lesson about loyalty.

... Are we the baddies?

Humiliating people instead of dealing with them in good faith isn't what goodies do.

[Labster]

Tomorrow's headlines, today:



I guess my previous post was also "tomorrow's headlines", because I didn't exactly expect a literal lecture and humiliation in front of cameras when I wrote "now Trump has to teach Z a lesson about loyalty", but there we have it.

Trump was right.  I'm tired of winning.  I'm tired of my predictions coming true.

[robkelk]

The day the old American order cracked in the Oval Office

"How they humiliated them in public. How they bullied them. There has been no precedent in the United States," said Aurel Braun, an expert on eastern Europe at the University of Toronto, calling the meeting "extraordinary."

The catastrophically bad meeting signalled our new geopolitical era — where tributes to allies, democracy and the postwar order are fading in the rear view.

We're seeing flashes of something else ahead: Hard power, wielded by hard leaders, lorded over their neighbours on a scale unseen in generations.

This fundamental turn in U.S. foreign policy played out in real time, on camera.

[classicdrogn]

From a quoites thread elseroem where it was provided with ho attrigution:

"Why is it that everyone trying to forcibly 'solve' all of society approaches it like a middle school word problem where they fundamentally misunderstood the question and miswrote all the equations?"

"Who else would be fucked up enough to think everything would be perfect if they were dictator?"

[Labster]

I think why I keep coming back to my series on the politics of a fictional Moon Kingdom is how it highlights that problem.  You start with someone who essentially a perfect, Hobbesian Leviathan as monarch... then what?  You still can't give everyone what they want all the time.  You still have culture and language causing growth and conflict.  And you still have politics, because even the twin principles of "love and justice" come into conflict with each other.

But to answer the question: most authoritarians think that.  The most core belief of fascism is: There was some fictional golden age in the past, then some outsiders intervened, and if we can restore it everything will be perfect and history will end.  This of course, is stupid.  Any religious scholar can tell you that Genesis 3 is not a bell that we can unring, that human attempts to build to utopia will fail (Genesis 11).  Which is all to say that people have been thinking about this problem for a very long time, and the true answer is a well known quantity to anyone who is not an idiot.

[robkelk]

Well, it's started.

The first volley of the trade war was fired by Governor Trump at midnight.

The first response was made by Prime Minister Trudeau one minute later.

Looks like I'm not doing business with American businesses for the duration... including Amazon or WalMart. Sure, its a drop in the bucket, but at least it's something.


EDIT: Trump's tariffs roil U.S. markets. And that's the reaction that matters.

The president caused an instant swoon with several simple words: "The tariffs — they're all set," Trump said on Monday, confirming a 25 per cent duty on most products was coming today, and that there was nothing Canada and Mexico could say to dissuade him.

Markets replied by quickly wiping out their entire gains for 2025, with the S&P 500 losing 1.76 per cent on the day, triggering hundreds of billions in losses in what Bloomberg's evening newsletter called, "the Trump sell-off." The drop continued Tuesday morning, with stocks further declining after the opening bell.

Gvernor Trmp might not care about Canada, but you can bet he pays attention to Wall Street.

[robkelk]

The U.S. has covertly destabilized nations. With Canada, it's being done in public

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has worked to destabilize many governments and nations in the past, using methods as mundane as corruption and as drastic as assassination, but the former spy chiefs say a campaign aimed at Canada would likely rely less on cloak-and-dagger tactics and more on social media — such as the Elon Musk-owned X platform.

"Is [Trump] trying to change political views in this country? If so, that's foreign interference," said Dick Fadden, who also headed CSIS and served as national security adviser to former prime minister Stephen Harper.

"It's no more acceptable from the United States than it is from China or Russia or anybody else."

[robkelk]

Alaska sends mixed messages

[robkelk]

On the off-chance somebody here used to work for NOAA (or knows someone who did)... Environment and Climate Change Canada is hiring.

However, you have to live in Canada or be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident. Also, since you have to be in the office three days a week, you have to live in either Ottawa (for the IT jobs currently being advertised) or Montreal (for the Satellite Image Analyst jobs currently being advertised).

Of course, if you're good enough to have a positive reputation and you know somebody in ECCC, you might not need to go through a public hiring process. Job searches are as much "who you know" an "what you know", after all, and the government is no different.

[MilkmanConspiracy]

Thanks! I figure someone who is ex-USAID in the GIS space may be close enough, right?