How can you stand it? The Democrats cannot decide whether to make a statement by not showing up for Trump's speech or to bring along "everyday people who are suffering from his policies." Yeah, that's gonna work. Since they are so ununified they can't stay away (like the rest of us), why not USE the empty seats productively? How about Mrs. Zelensky sitting in one of them? The fired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in another? Liz Cheney in a third? Tim Walz in one? The fired head of the VA in another? Andrew McCabe in one? Do you think Bill Barr would like a seat? Fiona Hill? Al Gore? Come on, once you get going, you could create quite the audience.
There are faces the tv would have to highlight, not in the balcony, on the floor. They seem incapable of any creative thought.
The Democrats frustrate me at times (I'm a good deal more to the left than the median of my party) but they don't drive me crazy because I recognize their purpose is to be legislators, not performance artists producing satisfying clickbait for the Resistance.
We have our share of top guns in the Democratic Party who routinely take the bark off Republicans and Trump in the House and Senate. I'm a senior paranoid about my Social Security and have been so frugal I've managed to increase my checking balance two months in a row, so I just chucked the Democrats $50. We all need to support them and not fragment, which is exactly what Trump and the GOP want us to do.
Okay, this thread is dead so forgive me y'all for bloviating on one of my all-time favorite symphonic movements, the Giusto from Roger Sessions' Symphony No. 1. This was written in 1927, it's tonal, neoclassical Sessions and it's massively influenced, not only by Igor Stravinsky's _Le Sacre_ but also by the syncopations of jazz. I've listened to it with the score and the time signature changes are relentless but so is the rhythmic drive, including a pronounced Latin influence in a section led by the horns. Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland must've wet their pants when they first heard it, because this is _American_ symphonic music through and through. The American Century, bay-bee.
The Bulwark's take (Sam Stein, Lauren Egan, Andrew Egger) on the pitchforks at the GOP townhalls. The thumbnail overstates it but YouTube thumbnails are always egregious clickbait:
Good post, Eric. I agree with most of it but not Step 4. There are a handful of people in the world with whom Trump has a relationship with beyond the transactional, and they're Putin, Xi and Kim. They're all dictators with an iron control of their press, pliant publics and the ruthless elimination of their opponents. Trump wants what they have, which may well be his only core political belief. Furthermore, Deep MAGA, what I call the hardest of Trump's hardcore base, have an ironclad affinity for Russia that's both racialist and eschatological. Russia for them (European Russia, which is the only Russia they care or know about) is carrying the world-historical banner of white Eastern Christendom. Russia is where white nationalism meets End Times Christianity. Trump couldn't abandon Russia if he wanted to and he certainly doesn't want to. In fact, he wants to turn the US into a copy of Putin's Russia, run by oligarchs with all opposition either bought off or cowed into submission.
Also, Trump genuinely hates Ukraine and Zelenskiy. He thinks Hillary colluded with Ukraine which is the _real_ election interference of 2016 (the conspiracy theory Giuliani and Andrii Derkach spun for him) and he despises Zelenskiy for not bending to his will in the Perfect Phone Call which got him impeached the first time. Like the bullying thug he is, he effectively said to Zelenskiy "take this deal or you'll lose your country and start WW3."
Zelenskiy is not going to take the deal, obviously. He's not going to stop fighting for his country. Europe is galvanized and they're beginning to imagine a NATO without the US, increasing their defense budgets, leaving Trump increasingly powerless on the world stage save to do more retributive economic damage to everybody with tariffs. He's not going to split with Putin and Russian cyberthreats work in Trump's favor now. There's virtually nothing Russia could do, including invading Western Europe, that would piss Trump off.
So no, Trump has no reason to ride in as Ukraine's last-minute savior.
What may happen, though -- and I'm just spitballing here -- is the opposite. Trump might actually call for US boots on the ground to aid Russia against Ukraine. Personally, I think that'd be the moment that would break the cabinet and JD Vance and trigger the 25th. I don't think Congress, let alone the American public, has the stomach to fight on Putin's side.
Maybe like this? After Britain and the Commonwealth, France, Poland, the Baltics break Russia can you imagine Trump swooping in to claim credit? Putin's still fucked, but the exact destruction of the "Russian" federation (Muscovy and Novgorod) is yet to be precisely defined. ) Most of "Russia" is still foreign countries occupied by Muscovy.
I don't think Europe would have Trump's help in that case, burdened as it doubtless would be with conditions so the US (i.e. Trump) could economically profit from it. I do agree very strongly with your general thesis that Russia's days are numbered; they've been severely damaged in all aspects and Zelenskiy is not going to agree to any cessation of current hostilities only to give Russia a chance to regroup, train more men and re-arm. That's the essence of Trump's "deal" and he'll never get it from Zelenskiy which will only further increase his animus towards Ukraine.
But I think Trump is already spiraling and he's itching to do the Wartime President thing, which I think will rip MAGA asunder whoever he wants to invade. I think it's best we hope for Trump's implosion and impotence rather than imagining he might wind up doing good by opposing the leader who did so much to get him elected.
I would prefer Trump to be a peacetime President, the great peacemaker; I would in that sense prefer to be wrong, it would be a better conclusion to his story arc. Were he to become a warlike president, which I don't expect, that contraries his own views and his base too, if he were however it would be defensive, reaction, a result of others unacceptable aggressions, whether in the Baltics or Taiwan. I do think he can and will deter both those scenarios. A warlike Trump would be even more unpredictable. I don't know why you think Trump wants war. He does not. He wants riches, glory, fame, a legacy.
I completely agree that this was what Trump was about in '16, opposing Bush and the Forever Wars. It's what attracts tankies like Tulsi Gabbard to him. Trump's still butthurt that he didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize.
But my gods, Eric, since he's elected he's done more saber rattling than Teddy flippin' Roosevelt. He's threatening to _invade Canada._ He wants to invade Panama and seize the Panama Canal. He wants to force Denmark to "sell" Greenland to us. He was seriously talking about using the US military to ethnically cleanse Gaza. And he's getting pretty close to provoking war with Mexico already by sending over military drones to blow up purported meth labs (and who knows how many innocents).
Trump is not intelligent but he has a finely tuned lizard instinct. He knows he can't do much for the economy. Despite his bluster, he knows that over half the country fucking hates him. And despite all his crap about Bush (he lied about opposing the Iraq invasion), he knows damn well that Dubya's polls shot up to the moon after the invasion.
So the simple answer is that Trump wants some of what Bush was having.
Trump's trolling with his saber rattling. It's hyperbole.
Trump does want to be popular but he can also see the infamy that follows Bush the younger like a putrid slime, the fact is, drunkie Bush is now broadly speaking hated and distrusted.
Not really. You're ascribing deep thinking to fundamentally uninformed people who are reacting rather than shaping the world. Great Russian Orthodox White Nationalism really has a limited user base and while you can whip them up into a frenzy they just get slaughtered, whether its Hitler in 1942 or Putin in 2022. It's because they are a stupid violent minority, which gives them some short-term power but long term dooms them. How do grifts and cons End?
I'm not ascribing deep thinking to the Christian nationalists and End Times fanatics in the US who have such a warm place in their hearts for Putin's Russia. They're fanatics, they exist in a hermetically sealed echo chamber and they'd follow Daddy Trump down an active volcano.
I totally agree they're doomed in the long term. But right now they're driving the bus. And people like Elon, who is an apocalypse fetishist although of the secular kind, could drive Trump right down the volcano.
If we start sending money and weapons to Putin, the MAGA idjits and craven nonidjits will applaud it. I truly believe they have been brainwashed. Oh how easily they are manipulated.
It has to be made clear to the stupid Americans among the population that America is now more vulnerable than it was just after 9/11. Personalise it for them cause they sure as hell don't care about us in Europe
Many Americans have reached out to us Canadians and been apologetic and extremely supportive. I think there are more of those Americans than Maga/Trump administration. I so appreciate it❤️ but I still know that invasion is a real possibility. Never did I ever think it would be an ally that would be the invader/killer/terrorist/theif…..
Rick,
How can you stand it? The Democrats cannot decide whether to make a statement by not showing up for Trump's speech or to bring along "everyday people who are suffering from his policies." Yeah, that's gonna work. Since they are so ununified they can't stay away (like the rest of us), why not USE the empty seats productively? How about Mrs. Zelensky sitting in one of them? The fired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in another? Liz Cheney in a third? Tim Walz in one? The fired head of the VA in another? Andrew McCabe in one? Do you think Bill Barr would like a seat? Fiona Hill? Al Gore? Come on, once you get going, you could create quite the audience.
There are faces the tv would have to highlight, not in the balcony, on the floor. They seem incapable of any creative thought.
They are driving me crazy!
The Democrats frustrate me at times (I'm a good deal more to the left than the median of my party) but they don't drive me crazy because I recognize their purpose is to be legislators, not performance artists producing satisfying clickbait for the Resistance.
We have our share of top guns in the Democratic Party who routinely take the bark off Republicans and Trump in the House and Senate. I'm a senior paranoid about my Social Security and have been so frugal I've managed to increase my checking balance two months in a row, so I just chucked the Democrats $50. We all need to support them and not fragment, which is exactly what Trump and the GOP want us to do.
Okay, this thread is dead so forgive me y'all for bloviating on one of my all-time favorite symphonic movements, the Giusto from Roger Sessions' Symphony No. 1. This was written in 1927, it's tonal, neoclassical Sessions and it's massively influenced, not only by Igor Stravinsky's _Le Sacre_ but also by the syncopations of jazz. I've listened to it with the score and the time signature changes are relentless but so is the rhythmic drive, including a pronounced Latin influence in a section led by the horns. Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland must've wet their pants when they first heard it, because this is _American_ symphonic music through and through. The American Century, bay-bee.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SphNBgdUvk&list=PLjfSXN3YNgY14Gk4bzX0E-2uD2WfbsmZQ
Tim and JVL on the tariffs market haircut:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2vWa8lMMs4
The Bulwark's take (Sam Stein, Lauren Egan, Andrew Egger) on the pitchforks at the GOP townhalls. The thumbnail overstates it but YouTube thumbnails are always egregious clickbait:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMJMJKL7QCU
It’s FOX!!!! They only listen to FOX. They don’t read. They never have read. It’s all because of FOX!!
I wrote a post today explaining that Trump will try to impose peace, fail, that Putin will then betray Trump, and in consequence Trump will destroy Putin. https://osintbrief.substack.com/p/free-books-mass-shooting-in-moscow
Good post, Eric. I agree with most of it but not Step 4. There are a handful of people in the world with whom Trump has a relationship with beyond the transactional, and they're Putin, Xi and Kim. They're all dictators with an iron control of their press, pliant publics and the ruthless elimination of their opponents. Trump wants what they have, which may well be his only core political belief. Furthermore, Deep MAGA, what I call the hardest of Trump's hardcore base, have an ironclad affinity for Russia that's both racialist and eschatological. Russia for them (European Russia, which is the only Russia they care or know about) is carrying the world-historical banner of white Eastern Christendom. Russia is where white nationalism meets End Times Christianity. Trump couldn't abandon Russia if he wanted to and he certainly doesn't want to. In fact, he wants to turn the US into a copy of Putin's Russia, run by oligarchs with all opposition either bought off or cowed into submission.
Also, Trump genuinely hates Ukraine and Zelenskiy. He thinks Hillary colluded with Ukraine which is the _real_ election interference of 2016 (the conspiracy theory Giuliani and Andrii Derkach spun for him) and he despises Zelenskiy for not bending to his will in the Perfect Phone Call which got him impeached the first time. Like the bullying thug he is, he effectively said to Zelenskiy "take this deal or you'll lose your country and start WW3."
Zelenskiy is not going to take the deal, obviously. He's not going to stop fighting for his country. Europe is galvanized and they're beginning to imagine a NATO without the US, increasing their defense budgets, leaving Trump increasingly powerless on the world stage save to do more retributive economic damage to everybody with tariffs. He's not going to split with Putin and Russian cyberthreats work in Trump's favor now. There's virtually nothing Russia could do, including invading Western Europe, that would piss Trump off.
So no, Trump has no reason to ride in as Ukraine's last-minute savior.
What may happen, though -- and I'm just spitballing here -- is the opposite. Trump might actually call for US boots on the ground to aid Russia against Ukraine. Personally, I think that'd be the moment that would break the cabinet and JD Vance and trigger the 25th. I don't think Congress, let alone the American public, has the stomach to fight on Putin's side.
Maybe like this? After Britain and the Commonwealth, France, Poland, the Baltics break Russia can you imagine Trump swooping in to claim credit? Putin's still fucked, but the exact destruction of the "Russian" federation (Muscovy and Novgorod) is yet to be precisely defined. ) Most of "Russia" is still foreign countries occupied by Muscovy.
I don't think Europe would have Trump's help in that case, burdened as it doubtless would be with conditions so the US (i.e. Trump) could economically profit from it. I do agree very strongly with your general thesis that Russia's days are numbered; they've been severely damaged in all aspects and Zelenskiy is not going to agree to any cessation of current hostilities only to give Russia a chance to regroup, train more men and re-arm. That's the essence of Trump's "deal" and he'll never get it from Zelenskiy which will only further increase his animus towards Ukraine.
But I think Trump is already spiraling and he's itching to do the Wartime President thing, which I think will rip MAGA asunder whoever he wants to invade. I think it's best we hope for Trump's implosion and impotence rather than imagining he might wind up doing good by opposing the leader who did so much to get him elected.
I would prefer Trump to be a peacetime President, the great peacemaker; I would in that sense prefer to be wrong, it would be a better conclusion to his story arc. Were he to become a warlike president, which I don't expect, that contraries his own views and his base too, if he were however it would be defensive, reaction, a result of others unacceptable aggressions, whether in the Baltics or Taiwan. I do think he can and will deter both those scenarios. A warlike Trump would be even more unpredictable. I don't know why you think Trump wants war. He does not. He wants riches, glory, fame, a legacy.
I completely agree that this was what Trump was about in '16, opposing Bush and the Forever Wars. It's what attracts tankies like Tulsi Gabbard to him. Trump's still butthurt that he didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize.
But my gods, Eric, since he's elected he's done more saber rattling than Teddy flippin' Roosevelt. He's threatening to _invade Canada._ He wants to invade Panama and seize the Panama Canal. He wants to force Denmark to "sell" Greenland to us. He was seriously talking about using the US military to ethnically cleanse Gaza. And he's getting pretty close to provoking war with Mexico already by sending over military drones to blow up purported meth labs (and who knows how many innocents).
Trump is not intelligent but he has a finely tuned lizard instinct. He knows he can't do much for the economy. Despite his bluster, he knows that over half the country fucking hates him. And despite all his crap about Bush (he lied about opposing the Iraq invasion), he knows damn well that Dubya's polls shot up to the moon after the invasion.
So the simple answer is that Trump wants some of what Bush was having.
Trump's trolling with his saber rattling. It's hyperbole.
Trump does want to be popular but he can also see the infamy that follows Bush the younger like a putrid slime, the fact is, drunkie Bush is now broadly speaking hated and distrusted.
Trump no longer needs Putin. But Putin needs Trump.
All Trump need do about all those 13 year old kidfucking pictures is claim they are deepfakes.
Well as I argued, Trump's MAGA influencer base needs Putin very much indeed.
Not really. You're ascribing deep thinking to fundamentally uninformed people who are reacting rather than shaping the world. Great Russian Orthodox White Nationalism really has a limited user base and while you can whip them up into a frenzy they just get slaughtered, whether its Hitler in 1942 or Putin in 2022. It's because they are a stupid violent minority, which gives them some short-term power but long term dooms them. How do grifts and cons End?
Badly. Very badly.
I'm not ascribing deep thinking to the Christian nationalists and End Times fanatics in the US who have such a warm place in their hearts for Putin's Russia. They're fanatics, they exist in a hermetically sealed echo chamber and they'd follow Daddy Trump down an active volcano.
I totally agree they're doomed in the long term. But right now they're driving the bus. And people like Elon, who is an apocalypse fetishist although of the secular kind, could drive Trump right down the volcano.
"When your opponent is making a mistake do nothing to interfere" - Napoleon
Yup, both Trump and Vance are communist dictator wanna be’s down deep and it’s bubbling to the surface
Keith busts out with a blistering Churchill quote, replacing Czechoslovakia with Ukraine:
https://omny.fm/shows/countdown-with-keith-olbermann/trump-just-lost-world-war-3-3-3-25
So exactly. Thank you very much sir.
Wow!
Straight up! We need more straight talk. Thank you Rick
I’m so sure trump has already given our top secret documents. It’s part of their deal.
Love your posts! Keep it up!
If we start sending money and weapons to Putin, the MAGA idjits and craven nonidjits will applaud it. I truly believe they have been brainwashed. Oh how easily they are manipulated.
It has to be made clear to the stupid Americans among the population that America is now more vulnerable than it was just after 9/11. Personalise it for them cause they sure as hell don't care about us in Europe
Or here in Canada!
Many Americans have reached out to us Canadians and been apologetic and extremely supportive. I think there are more of those Americans than Maga/Trump administration. I so appreciate it❤️ but I still know that invasion is a real possibility. Never did I ever think it would be an ally that would be the invader/killer/terrorist/theif…..
The Ugly American phrase has never been more true than now. He is alive and (not) well, and making the rest of America sick in body, mind, and soul.