Didn’t Shrubya once boast about trading nuclear technology/weapons for mangoes?
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For a long time in America, there has been a tendency to equate democracy with market capitalism. Nothing could be further from the truth.
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I knew China was big into the pharmaceuticals and especially a lot of those supplements. I guess I should have figured India was also part of the South Asia and Far East coordination of those ingredients for trade.
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I realize that legally and procedurally and so on you always have to leave open the question of whether the regime is acting in good faith or bad faith until evidence makes clear which it is. … But I wonder whether anyone still believes that this regime is ever acting in good faith. Trump himself is clearly incapable of and uninterested in doing it. Acting in good faith – ever – would fly in the face of every “principle” his father and Roy Cohn taught him.
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Welcome to a place of firm footing, amid the shifting sands.
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We had a very good pharmaceuticals industry located in Puerto Rico until the hurricanes in TSF’s first administration destroyed the factories and TSF refused aid to rebuild them. So we are even more dependent on China and India than in the past. Pure stupidity and venality.
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I can actually hear that picture.
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That’s because the way its taught in our schools often conflates the two systems. One is political, the other economic. There are also several more democratic and socialist leaning countries in the world.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/democratic-socialist-countries#title
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Lumping in Western democracies with the Soviet Union?
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Curious what will happen to Treasuries, though. Other countries know they can’t trust tcf to keep his word, and they invest in America with a wary eye.
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The ecoli outbreak that has failed to make the news. This will become more common. from Josh’s bluesky
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Looking for someplace to hide from this guy, his 5 sibs, and mostly Mom …
Sorry it’s fuzzy, there’s a screen in my window and it’s pretty zooomed
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He’s a child. A 10 year old special needs child.
But the US president on Tuesday said he would be “very nice” to China and not play hardball with Chinese President Xi Jinping. “We’re going to live together very happily and ideally work together,” Trump said.
The president told reporters in Washington on Tuesday he plannned to be “very nice” to China in trade talks and that tariffs could drop in both countries if they could reach a deal, adding: “It will come down substantially, but it won’t be zero.”
The comments sparked a fresh rally on Wall Street, with the S&P 500 blue chip index and the Nasdaq ending the day up by more than 2.5%. Overnight in Asia, Japan’s Nikkei rose by nearly 2%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up 2.4% and the South Korean Kospi gained 1.6%.
The rally spread to Europe in early trading on Wednesday, with the UK’s FTSE 100 index up 1.6%, while the Italian FTSE MiB rose by 1.1%. Germany’s Dax gained 2.6% and France’s Cac 2.1%.
There’s no indication that the Chinese are going to reciprocate.
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Fort McCoy commander Colonel Sheyla Baez Ramirez was relieved of duty after the Wisconsin army base failed to put up pictures of Mr Trump, JD Vance, the vice-president, and Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, on a wall displaying its chain of command. (Army commander suspended after refusing to display Trump photo )
Would anyone have been surprised if it was more like this,
Or this,
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Unmitigated greed and selfishness is part of the ‘rugged individualism,’ right? This from Heather Cox Richardson made me want to throw up. Apologies if it’s been posted before.
Four days ago, on April 18, journalist Wes Siler noted in his Wes Siler’s Newsletter that the day before, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum had signed an extraordinary order. The order assigned to the assistant secretary for policy, management, and budget, or AS-PMB, control over the Department of the Interior, including its personnel and its budget.
Siler explains that “[t]he person currently serving as AS-PMB (which in normal times would require Senate confirmation) is DOGE operative Tyler Hassen, the CEO of a Houston-based energy company.” Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Western Priorities, said in a statement: “Elon Musk is now effectively in charge of America’s public lands.”
Siler notes that Burgum has handed power over the Department of the Interior to “a hitherto unknown political operative” who is holding his position in violation of the appointments clause of the Constitution.
He also notes that the Department of the Interior “manages the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Indian Education, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, Bureau of Trust Funds Administration, Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Geological Survey,” in addition to the National Park Service. “As such,” Siler writes, “Hassen is now responsible for 70,000 employees, the administration of numerous international treaties, the welfare of 574 Native American Tribes, 433 national park sites, over 500 million acres of public lands, 700 million acres of subsurface minerals, and 3.2 billion acres of the Outer Continental Shelf.”
Burgum’s order says that his order is designed “to effectuate the consolidation, unification and optimization of administrative functions within the Department of the Interior…in order to achieve effectiveness, accountability and cost savings for the American taxpayer.” In other words, he is falling back on the idea of further cuts to the U.S. government in order to save money.
… since the 1970s, the right wing has come to see the public ownership of lands as an affront to the idea that individuals should be able to use the resources they believe God has put there for them to use. Developers have encouraged that ideology, for privatization of America’s western lands has always meant that they ended up in the hands of a few wealthy individuals.
Every goddamn day. And even us news junkies miss egregious stuff.
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Yes, and I understand the need to NOT have the President tied up in court, the way Republicans are manipulating the courts.
Committing crime is not legal even if committed by a sitting president. The office cannot be charged. The man in the office? Sure. He’s replaceable, even while performing the duties. The Constitution says so.
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I will give sickfugg a pass on not being able to keep all the lawsuits straight. He doesn’t have all his marbles.
We should remember that long before he got into politics he was, I believe officially, the most litigious individual in our history. Thousands and thousands of legal actions, mostly abusive and perverting the rule of law. Once he got into politics, it’s been a blizzard of lawsuits all day everyday…and much of it having nothing to do with his personal money. I can bet he’s very aware of suits where his money is on the line…but I am sure most people wouldn’t be able to keep all these cases straight.
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Too DEI, and it’s also been banned by the administration because it’s the precursor to most research projects that are by definition waste, fraud and abuse.
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