Trump 2025

[Poor Old Gil]

Tåkefyrste skrev (13 timer siden):

Amerikanere flest får det dog jævlig mye bedre.

Som når prisene kommer til å skyte i været pga import-tariffene?

[Abigor]

"I don't send women into battle to defend me. Which I guess we now do. That's wrong." - Tucker Carlson.

Er bare kaos og klovneri som kommer ut av den mannen. Innemellom bidrar han med noen tankevekkende spørsmål, men vanskelig å oppdage i all dritten.

[jallajall]

Ric Grenell tok selv turen til Venezuela og returnerte med 6 amerikanske borgere.

US envoy leaves Venezuela with six Americans after meeting Maduro

Officials from the Trump administration had said earlier on Friday that one of Grenell's top aims for the visit was to secure the release of Americans detained in the country, at a time when the Trump administration has been driving a deportation and anti-gang push in the United States.

Grenell hinted at the trip last week, after the new US president’s inauguration, writing on X: “Donald Trump is President of the United States, again. And diplomacy is back. I’ve spoken to multiple officials in Venezuela today and will begin meetings early tomorrow morning. Talking is a tactic.”


 

Endret i går, 12:14 av jallajall

[rabler]

46 minutes ago, Abigor said:

"I don't send women into battle to defend me. Which I guess we now do. That's wrong." - Tucker Carlson.

Er bare kaos og klovneri som kommer ut av den mannen. Innemellom bidrar han med noen tankevekkende spørsmål, men vanskelig å oppdage i all dritten.

Blind høne kan også finne korn. Eventuelle "tankevekkende" spørsmål fra den kanten er neppe med overlegg.

[Svein M]

Zork skrev (13 timer siden):

Tucker Carlson er noe av det mest patetiske jeg vet om. Men Piers Morgan er ikke langt bak. Dette er to fryktelig mennesker begge to og jeg bør muligens ikke uttale meg da jeg ikke har sett noen av videoene (viser til hva jeg synes om begge to) men jeg tviler på om en samtale mellom de to kan gi noe av verdi.

Veldig stor forskjell på disse Tucker Carlson bør ikke ha noe med politikk diskusjon å gjøre.

[JK22]

jallajall skrev (1 time siden):

Ric Grenell tok selv turen til Venezuela og returnerte med 6 amerikanske borgere.

US envoy leaves Venezuela with six Americans after meeting Maduro

Officials from the Trump administration had said earlier on Friday that one of Grenell's top aims for the visit was to secure the release of Americans detained in the country, at a time when the Trump administration has been driving a deportation and anti-gang push in the United States.

Grenell hinted at the trip last week, after the new US president’s inauguration, writing on X: “Donald Trump is President of the United States, again. And diplomacy is back. I’ve spoken to multiple officials in Venezuela today and will begin meetings early tomorrow morning. Talking is a tactic.”


 

Så Trump er villig til å tvinge flere millioner som hadde flyktet fra politisk undertrykkelse og sosial nød tilbake til et dels ruinert land? Det er som hvis alle vietnamflyktninger skulle sendes tilbake i 1980-årene! Dette tror jeg kommer til å bli meget godt mottatt; ikke! Det er et mønster i alt dette; Trump angrep USAs allierte med full styrke mens han nærmere seg USAs fiender, 10 % toll på kinesiske varer fra et fiendeland mot 25 % på varer fra vennskapsland?!! Dette er i total brudd med politisk skikk og bruk i uminnelige tider, mer et "hohenzollernmirakel" fra den europeiske sjuårskrigen da Preussen var reddet i det siste øyeblikket av et russisk troneskifte med en ny tsar som brått stoppet krigen og endog sluttet seg til prøysserne (han ble styrt og drept av hans hustru Katarina etter kort tid). Trump snur 180 grad helt om på USAs politikk. 

Dessuten har det vist seg, som da Pistorius fra Tyskland innrømt, at Trumps 5 %-kravet virker ikke i land med for små statsbudsjetter uten bevilgningsevne - slik at det setter NATO under stor tvil i fremtiden. Norge er heldigvis ikke et av disse NATO-landene med mindre statsbudsjett enn gjennomsnittlig. Uansett er det klart at forholdet mellom USA og dens allierte har på rekordtid forsuret seg, i likhet med Trumps kunnskapsløshet gjør at det er meget mye som har blitt uklart mellom de vestlige hovedstedene.

Markedet som lenge hadde vært i la-la-la stemning ved å tro "det vil ikke skje, det vil ikke skje", har fått et stort sjokk i fredag da det blir klart at Trump aktet å innføre 25 % toll mot nabolandene og bare 10 % (slik at det blir dyrere for varer flyttet ut av Kina enn disse fra Kina!) mot Kina, varsler toll mot EU og deretter toll på olje og gass fra 18. februar - som fikk mange økonomieksperter til å vakle i sterk sjokk. De VET dette er galskap. Det finnes olje som ikke produseres innenfor USA, spesielt tungolje! Nordsjøolje, iransk olje og venezuelansk olje har viktige egenskaper som ikke finnes i de nordamerikanske oljefeltene selv om Albertaoljen kom i nærheten av nordsjøoljen. Den amerikanske industrien trenger tungolje, og det er også manko på vanlig olje - skifteolje duger ikke. Ennå virker det som at det ikke finnes en eneste økonomiekspert i det hvite huset. 

Og ikke bare det, det hersker kaos omkring statsforvaltningen som nå er kommet så langt, at føderale dommerne har begynte med å gripe inn mens republikanerne i kongressen er kommet under voksende angrep fra sine velgerne, samtidig som det kom ut at mange velgerne som hadde stemt republikansk og på Trump, har begynte å få seriøse betenkninger - men som sagt; de vil bare holde ut fremfor å stoppe opp. 

Trump har brutt så mange lov at han har forbrutt seg mot den konstitusjonelle forpliktelsen knyttet til embetet om å opprettholde respekten for lov og dom, med et uante stort antall presidentordrer - og han har ambisjoner om å tvinge til seg kontroll over statsfinansene. Hvis det skje, 

VIL DEN AMERIKANSKE REPUBLIKKEN OPPHØRE MED Å EKSISTERE. 

Et så massivt brudd på konstitusjonen vil betyr at USA kan ikke eksistere. Det kommer til å presse seg på i løpet av den nære fremtiden. Dessuten har republikanske MAGA-bevegelser i flere delstater begynte å tilsidesette demokratiske og politiske rettigheter som et lovforslag i delstaten Tennessee som gjør det forbud å stemme/protestere mot Trumps politikk - dette er politisk undertrykkelse, diktaturpolitikk! 

Borgerkrig er nå garantert, kaos kommer til å herske og hele verden vil bli sterkt rammet. Når den tar slutt, vil vi se kjeppjakt på alle trumpkultmedlemmer over hele verden. 

[JK22]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-is-reversing-the-justice-department-s-civil-rights-policies/ar-AA1yaCfV?ocid=BingNewsVerp&cvid=f09853d32d8e43bfb33aaa0a6e42b52b&ei=40

Donald Trump kicked off his second presidential term with dozens of executive orders, many of which focus on hot-button culture war issues, from transgender and abortion rights to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The job of enforcing the administration’s position on those issues will largely fall to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

During past handovers between Democratic and Republican administrations, the Civil Rights Division has undergone major policy shifts. During the George W. Bush administration, for example, the division focused resources on fighting religious discrimination. After Barack Obama took office, the division prioritized preventing racial and ethnic discrimination.

The scale of the expected civil rights policy changes between the Biden and Trump administrations may eclipse those of past transitions. 

Former Justice Department officials and advocates told NBC News they expect the new administration to swiftly carry out sweeping reversals of most major Biden administration civil rights policies. Already, the Trump-run department has issued a memo freezing all action in civil rights cases, including filings and settlements, and withdrawn from multiple cases filed during the Biden administration. 

As it has in other parts of the Justice Department, the Trump administration has made personnel changes in the Civil Rights Division. The top two officials in its appellate section have been reassigned to a new task force that will prosecute officials from sanctuary cities who do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement efforts, according to a DOJ official familiar with the matter.

Conservative California attorney

To lead the charge, Trump nominated California lawyer Harmeet Dhillon, 56, who has alleged fraud in the 2020 election, accused Google of discriminating against white men and spoken out against state laws to protect doctors who perform gender-affirming surgery for transgender minors.

Justin Levitt, deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division under Obama, expressed concern over Dhillon’s nomination, saying most of her casework has focused on “cultural grievance issues.”

He argued that Dhillon largely hasn’t focused on the traditional mission of the Civil Rights Division, which was established by the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination against all people in the United States, with a focus on vulnerable groups. 

“Many of the country’s civil rights statutes were passed in order to preserve and protect the civil rights, particularly of underrepresented and underprivileged groups,” said Levitt, who added, “There is still, unfortunately, no shortage of discrimination in America today.” 

Dhillon, who is awaiting Senate confirmation, declined to comment. The Justice Department didn’t respond to a request for comment.  

Jesse Panuccio, who was an acting associate attorney general in the Justice Department during Trump’s first term, praised Dhillon and Trump for their aggressiveness. 

“Other Republican administrations have either not had the experience or the courage to make these moves, and it appears President Trump in his second term — after all he’s faced — is going full throttle this time,” Panuccio said. “There’s no adjustment period. They are starting Day One to implement the agenda he campaigned on, and they expect career officials to faithfully execute those policy decisions.”

Panuccio added, “They aren’t going to pull any punches this time around, and I think they’re going to make sure the Civil Rights Division is consistent with the president’s priorities.”

Targeting DEI 

One of the most visible aspects of Trump’s first week in office has been the elimination of government DEI initiatives that sought to expand opportunities for underrepresented groups. 

Last week, Trump signed an executive order abolishing the initiatives and directing agency heads and the attorney general to identify private-sector targets that the Civil Rights Division could sue as part of a plan to “deter DEI programs or principles that constitute illegal discrimination or preferences.” 

One person eager to see DEI policies abolished is Edward Blum, who has, for years, initiated lawsuits arguing that affirmative action programs are discriminatory. His legal campaign culminated with his 2023 victory before the U.S. Supreme Court in the Harvard case, which outlawed the use of race-conscious admissions policies in higher education.

Blum and his organization, the American Alliance for Equal Rights, have since then pursued new claims against private companies to stop race-based DEI policies. 

“The American Alliance for Equal Rights would welcome the United States Department of Justice to voice their support for the colorblind legal covenant that binds us together as a multiracial nation,” Blum said.

Rolling back LGBTQ protections 

The Justice Department is expected to release new guidance on transgender workers and students, which would affirm the LGBTQ rights reversal Trump initiated last week. He tasked the department last week to “correct” the Biden administration’s “misapplication” of the Supreme Court’s Bostock ruling, which found that federal law prohibits workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. 

“The phrase ‘gender’ has been hijacked to mean something that was infused with complete ideology,” said Roger Severino, a vice president at the conservative Heritage Foundation who spent seven years as a career lawyer in the Civil Rights Division. “It has confused matters, and we need clarity, because we’re dealing with real human beings.”

The Biden administration leaned on the 2020 ruling when it released new Title IX regulations on protections for LGBTQ students, spurring pushback from conservatives who alleged they could endanger females and allow transgender athletes in girls’ sports. 

“Title IX was passed by Congress to protect women’s rights, not the rights of men pretending to be women, in sports and equal treatment in our educational institutions,” Dhillon said in a 2024 television interview.

The Civil Rights Division, meanwhile, can change course in several transgender rights cases prioritized by the Biden administration, including a statement of interest filed in rebuke of a West Virginia law banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s and girls’ sports. The state has a request for review pending before the Supreme Court.

“It would send the message that the Trump administration is concerned about women’s sports,” said Jim Campbell, chief counsel of the Alliance for Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group.   

Inaction on voting rights

The Civil Rights Division plays a role in protecting the right to vote, an area that has become more contentious since Trump claimed that the 2020 election was stolen and that undocumented immigrants are illegally voting for Democrats. 

In the run-up to the 2024 general election, the Civil Rights Division and immigrant rights organizations sued Virginia, alleging the state was illegally purging its voter rolls within 90 days of an election, a violation of the National Voter Registration Act. 

A federal judge put a halt to the purges, but the ruling was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, which allowed them to continue up until Election Day. The Justice Department withdrew from the case, which remains active, on Tuesday evening, days before Civil Rights Division lawyers were due in court to defend their position. 

“We’re disappointed,” Brent Ferguson, a lawyer for the Campaign Legal Center who argued the case on behalf of the immigrant rights groups, said of the move.

“The DOJ represents the United States and the American people, and having them withdraw from a lawsuit like this is a problem, because it shows that the government is less willing to enforce our voting laws,” Ferguson said. 

The Civil Rights Division has additional cases still pending against various states alleging discriminatory violations of the Voting Rights Act. Hans Von Spakovsky, counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights from 2001 to 2005, said the Justice Department should reverse course and dismiss the pending cases.

“They need to look at those cases, and based on the evidence we now have from how turnout wasn’t affected, they need to dismiss them and not continue to litigate what I consider to be abusive cases,” Von Spakovsky said. 

Backing abortion-rights opponents 

Former Justice Department officials, including Von Spakovsky, said the new administration has the ability to determine whether ongoing cases in which abortion-rights opponents were charged under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act have merit.

During the Biden administration, Von Spakovsky said, many anti-abortion-rights advocates were charged under the 1994 law, which preserves access to reproductive health clinics, crisis pregnancy centers, faith-based facilities and churches.

At least a dozen cases involving anti-abortion-rights defendants have been filed since 2020, according to federal court records tracked by NBC News. Trump last week pardoned nearly two dozen abortion-rights opponents, several of whom were involved in a recent blockade of a reproductive health clinic in Washington, D.C. 

As of Monday, the Civil Rights Division had dismissed two civil cases that were filed against defendants accused of obstructing access to reproductive health clinics in Florida and Pennsylvania.  

Von Spakovsky praised Dhillon’s arrival. 

“The most important factor of getting someone in that position is that you get someone who actually believes in the rule of law,” he said. “Harmeet Dhillon is a fighter and has been very strong in opposing discrimination of all kinds.”

Det blir verre og verre. Trumpadministrasjonen er fast besluttet på å fjerne grunnleggende rettigheter for seksuelle minoriteter, minoritetsfolk som utsettes for rasistisk diskriminering, kvinner som utsettes for diskriminering, åpne opp for trakassering og angrep mot tjenester som abort og stemmefjerning ved å tillate en gjentagelse av Jim Crow-lover som flere republikanske delstatsregjeringer er i full gang med å tvinge gjennom. 

Det vil også åpne opp for korrupsjon i fremtiden. 

Kort sagt; USA vil settes tilbake med 70 år som et resultat. 

[jallajall]

Hva! Hvordan kan Musk finne seg i dette?!


 

[jallajall]

25 minutes ago, JK22 said:

Dessuten har det vist seg, som da Pistorius fra Tyskland innrømt, at Trumps 5 %-kravet virker ikke i land med for små statsbudsjetter uten bevilgningsevne - slik at det setter NATO under stor tvil i fremtiden.

Prioriteringer. Enten må borgerne betale mer i skatt eller så må man hente penger ved å kutta andre utgifter. Gjerne en kombo. Forsvar koster.
 

[jallajall]

DNC skal velge nytt overhode denne helgen.

Choosing new leaders, Democrats are still in denial

On Thursday night, the candidates gathered at Georgetown University for a final forum. The event was moderated by not one, not two, but three MSNBC hosts.

The key issue facing the DNC now is, of course, reforming the party after its defeat in the 2024 elections.
Nearly every jurisdiction — states, counties, cities, and suburbs — moved to the right from the 2020 election. The Democratic Party’s losses were across the board.

One might think such a drubbing would motivate a party to examine its mistakes and take a hard look in the mirror. But that would not be the DNC way, or the MSNBC way. So, the Georgetown forum was, in significant part, an exercise in denial.

Perhaps the key moment came when Capehart asked the candidates and the audience for “a show of hands — how many of you believe that racism and misogyny played a role in Vice President Harris’s defeat?” Everyone onstage and in the audience raised his or her hand. It was unanimous. “OK, so that’s good,” Capehart said. “You all pass.”
 

What the Next DNC Chair Must Do to Save the Party

Certainly, pushing back against Trump will be a vital task for the new top team. But that’s not enough. Democrats need leaders who will drive a radical transformation of their party’s character and vision.

What’s needed is a Democratic Party where grassroots activists and their allies in labor, environmental, and civil rights organizations sweep the pablum of past messaging aside and replace it with an absolute commitment to economic and social and racial justice that gives frustrated Americans something to vote for.

That means that the next DNC chair cannot be simply a competent manager—or, worse yet, a mere fund-raising complement to the party’s plodding congressional leadership. The chair, along with the vice chairs, must lead in a way that ensures that Trump and his minions aren’t the only ones defining our political moment.
 

[JK22]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/many-many-casualties-panama-officials-fear-war-with-united-states-over-control-of-canal/ar-AA1yer5U?ocid=BingNewsVerp&cvid=7b51bf4c2a5e45fd92e97522ec999ce4&ei=23

Panama forberede seg på det verste scenarioet om å forsvare seg mot et amerikansk angrep. De har sagt nei til enhver forhandling omkring kanalområdets suverenitet, de gjort det meget klinkende klart at 1970-traktatenes gyldighet er gjeldende som utgangspunkt for enhver disputt man har med USA. Amerikanske krigsskip skal ikke ha fortrinn over krigsskip fra andre land i tråd med nøytralitetsbestemmelsen som gir USA rett til å intervenere fordi all trafikk må behandles likt. 

Det panamanske militæret er knapt mer enn suverenitetspoliti bokstavelig talt med rundt 80,000 trente menn, av dette 30,000 heltidsansatte, de eneste med militærstrening er grensevokterstyrkene mot den colombianske grensen - som er i to løse organiserte brigader. Det betyr da at de panamanske styrkene kan ikke reise et forsvar, langt mindre i et demilitarisert område. Men det kan åpne for geriljakrig, og Panama kan regner med sterk støtte av andre land som Costa Rica og Colombia for å bryte med USA, som vil få seriøse trøbbel med shippingmakter som Japan og Sør-Korea. Mye av trafikken er knyttet til USA fremfor til resten av verden, slik at amerikanerne vil bli skadelidende. 

Det er ikke mulig å se noe mening i alt denne stupiditeten omkring Panama og Grønland. 

[JK22]

https://www.msn.com/en-in/politics/government/inside-the-gop-s-60-year-conspiracy-to-kill-our-democracy-opinion/ar-AA1yewLx?ocid=BingNewsSerp

Inside the GOP's 60-year conspiracy to kill our democracy

In Wednesday’s Daily Take I mentioned Russell Kirk and the origins of today’s hard right GOP. A few people replied with, “Who’s that?” and similar questions; others were incredulous that Republicans actually believed the middle class created by FDR’s New Deal was a bad thing. So, here’s the backstory to what I mentioned.

I was thirteen years old in 1964 when my dad, a Republican activist, gave me a copy of John Stormer’s book “None Dare Call It Treason.” The Goldwater campaign had sent it to him, and its claim that the State Department was filled with communists intent on handing America over to the USSR had his friends buzzing.

Ironically, Stormer’s book and the movement it ignited within the GOP is largely responsible for that party today standing on the precipice of fully endorsing fascism as an alternative to democracy in the US.

And it was started by morbidly rich men (it was all men back then) who wanted to use the threat of a “communist menace” to gut the union movement to increase their own corporate profits and CEO pay.

The founding premise of the modern conservative movement tracks back a generation before Stormer’s book to a Republican thought leader named Russell Kirk. He laid it out in his 1951 book The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, as I detail in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy.

Kirk argued that the middle class was becoming a threat to America; without clearly defined classes and power structures — essentially without the morbidly rich in complete control of everything — he worried that society would devolve into chaos.

The opening chapter of his book was about Edmund Burke, the Irish conservative who wrote, in 1790, that hairdressers and candlemakers should not be allowed to run for political office or even to vote:

“The occupation of a hairdresser or of a working tallow-chandler cannot be a matter of honor to any person — to say nothing of a number of other more servile employments. Such descriptions of men ought not to suffer oppression from the state; but the state suffers oppression if such as they, either individually or collectively, are permitted to rule. In this you think you are combating prejudice, but you are at war with nature...”

Kirk and his followers essentially predicted in 1951 that if today’s “hairdressers and working tallow-chandlers” — college students, women, working-class people, and people of color — ever got even close to social and political power at the same level as wealthy white men, there would essentially be a communist revolution in the US, handing us over to Stalin and his Politburo.

(Keep in mind, this was when racial segregation was legal and brutally enforced, the voting age was 21, campuses were almost entirely all-male, both abortion and birth control were illegal in most states, and women couldn’t open checking accounts or get credit cards without a husband’s, brother’s, or father’s signature.)

Throughout the 1950s, Kirk and his warnings of the dangers of an activist middle-class developed a small following; the most prominent of his proponents were William F. Buckley Jr. and Barry Goldwater. Most Republicans, though, considered him a crackpot.

But when the birth-control pill was legalized in 1961 and the Vietnam War heated up a few years later, those marginalized groups Kirk had warned his wealthy white male followers about began to rise up in protest.

Kids were burning draft cards, women were burning bras, and Martin Luther King Jr. was leading a movement for racial justice that the white power structure blamed for American cities burning. Gay liberation was also having a moment.

Meanwhile, the Arab Oil Embargoes of the 1970s had lit the flame of inflation, and unionized workers were striking all over America for wage increases to keep up with the rising cost of living.

Wealthy white conservatives freaked out as the morbidly rich promoted the idea that America was experiencing a “moral decline” that could only be fixed by ending the union movement and other “liberal” causes that shared the union movements’ populist goals.

They became convinced that they were seeing Kirk’s prophecy play out in real time on their television screens every night: the “communists” — those uppity racial minorities, women who’d forgotten their “rightful place in society,” students who objected to Vietnam, unionized workers, and gender minorities — were on the verge of “taking over” America.

These five movements all hitting America at the same time got the attention of conservatives and Republicans who had previously ignored or even ridiculed Kirk back in the 1950s. Suddenly, America’s most powerful and well-known conservative commentators (like William F. Buckley Jr.) were telling Republicans that Russell Kirk was, indeed, a prophet.

They’d finally found a politically acceptable “hook” to destroy the wealth of working-class people and transfer trillions into their own money bins: fear of communism and a prophesied social decay caused by an activist middle class.

The Republican/Conservative “solution” to the “crisis” these five movements represented was put into place in 1981 when Ronald Reagan was sworn into office: the explicit goal of the morbidly rich white men funding the so-called Reagan Revolution was to take the middle class down a peg to end the protests of the ’60s and ’70s, restore “social stability,” and increase corporate profitability.

Their plan was to declare war on labor unions so wages could slide back down again, end free college across the nation so students would live in fear rather than be willing to protest, and increase the penalties Nixon had already put on drugs so they could use those laws against their scapegoats, particularly the hippy antiwar protesters and Black people demanding an end to police killings. They also wanted to outlaw abortion, to put women “back in their place.”

Thus, Reagan massively cut taxes on rich people and raised taxes on working-class people 11 times. For example, he put income taxes on Social Security and unemployment payments, and put in a mechanism to track and tax tips income, all of which had previously been tax-free but were exclusively needed and used by middle-class people.

He ended the tax deductibility of credit-card, car-loan, and student-debt interest, overwhelmingly claimed by working-class people. At the same time, he cut the top tax bracket for millionaires and billionaires from 74% to 25%. (There were only a handful of billionaires in America then, in large part because of previous tax policies; today’s democracy-destroying explosion of billionaires followed Reagan’s, Bush’s, and Trump’s massive tax cuts on the rich.)

Reagan declared war on labor unions, crushed PATCO in less than a week, and over the next decade the result of his war on labor was that union membership went from about a third of the American workforce when he came into office to around 10% at the end of the Reagan/Bush presidencies. It’s just now beginning to recover from its low of 6% of the private workforce.

He and Bush also husbanded the moribund 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades (GATT, which let Clinton help create the WTO) and negotiated NAFTA, which Clinton signed and thus opened a floodgate for American companies to move manufacturing overseas, leaving American workers underemployed while radically cutting corporate labor costs and union membership.

And, sure enough, Reagan’s War on Labor cut average inflation-adjusted minimum and median wages by more, over a couple of decades, than anybody had seen since the Republican Great Depression of the 1920s and ’30s.

The billionaire’s investment in taking the middle-class down a peg was paying off by orders of magnitude.

Had Reagan not destroyed the nation’s unions, the median American income today would be well over $100,000 a year, minimum-wage households would have a family income of $86,000, and a single wage-earner would still be able to buy a house, a car, send the kids to college, and have a decent retirement (as my dad did, working a union job for 35 years in a tool-and-die shop).

Instead, CEOs today keep all that money for themselves and their investors.

And Reagan’s War on Colleges jacked up the cost of education so high that an entire generation is today saddled with more than $1.5 trillion in student debt: as predicted, many aren’t willing to jeopardize it all by “acting up” on campuses.

The key to selling this campaign of impoverishment to the American people to help out the billionaire class was the idea that the US shouldn’t protect the rights of workers, subsidize education, grant women equal rights, or enforce Civil Rights laws because, conservatives said, all of those things were aspects of “socialism.” And if America embraced socialism, we may as well be ruled by the Soviet Union.

As Reagan told us in his first inaugural, government “socialist” programs were not the solution to our problems, but instead were the problem itself.

He ridiculed the formerly-noble idea of service to one’s country and joked that there were really no good people left in government because if they were smart or competent they’d be working in the private sector for a lot more money.

He even told us that the nine most frightening words in the English language were, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

Following Lewis Powell’s 1971 memo, throughout the 1970s and 1980s Republican billionaires built a massive infrastructure of think tanks and media outlets to promote and amplify Reagan’s message that government supports of any sort for poor or working-class people were simply gateway drugs to socialism and, inevitably, communism.

It so completely swept America that by the 1990s even President Bill Clinton was saying things like, “The era of big government is over,” and “This is the end of welfare as we know it.” Limbaugh, Hannity and other right-wing radio talkers were getting millions a year in subsidies from billionaire-funded groups like the Heritage Foundation. Billionaire-owned Fox “News” today carries on the tradition.

It had been a pretty good scam for the billionaires who owned the GOP and wanted, back in the 1950s, to stop the union movement that was forcing them to share their profits with their workers.

First, they terrified Americans about communism and socialism, then convinced about half of us that those things came straight out of “liberal” social and economic movements.

Unions, feminism, acceptance of the queer community, civil rights, minimum wage increases, and even regulation of corporate behavior would, they told us, all lead to Soviet-style tyranny.

So, to save America from herself, Reagan gutted the American middle class, transferring over $50 trillion in wealth from working class people into the money bins of the morbidly rich.

By 2016, Americans were starting to figure out that they’d been screwed — and that Hillary Clinton’s husband had been in on it by continuing Reagan’s policies and doubling-down on free trade — and were loudly demanding change.

Into this maelstrom walked Donald Trump, proclaiming himself the savior of the country. In the GOP primary he pointed out how corrupt his opponents were, particularly Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, and destroyed them, one after the other.

For the general election in 2016, he changed his tune and ran on what was traditionally a Democratic platform, saying he was going to bring jobs home, end so-called “free trade” policies, raise taxes on the rich so much that “my friends won’t talk to me anymore,” and make sure every American had free or low-cost healthcare and access to an affordable college education.

They were all lies — something Trump had become adept at during his business career — but they worked and sucked in disaffected workers who knew they’d been screwed but weren’t sure who did it to them or why.

So here we are.

We have an open fascist and apparent friend of authoritarian Russia as president after being convicted by a jury of his peers on 34 felony charges, having previously been adjudicated as responsible for sexual abuse (the judge called it “rape”) and fraud.

He’s putting into place people and policies that could turn America into an authoritarian nation like Russia or Hungary, and apparently wants to re-align the United States away from NATO and the EU and toward Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.

We are literally facing the authoritarian future that John Stormer was warning us about back in 1964. Only instead of “communists” in the State Department, it’s a billionaire president with the avowed goal of ending union rights and locking up or using the Army with live ammunition against those who protest his policies.

And it all tracks back to wealthy conservatives funding a project in the 1960s to scare Americans about socialism and communism so they could stop the union-fueled growth of wages that were cutting into their profits.

Perhaps none dare call it treason. But I do.

Dette er i samsvar med mine egne observasjoner av det republikanske partiets politikk og mønster i de siste tjue år, spesielt etter Gingrich kom inn i kongressen i 1994, en kontrarevolusjonær anti-progressiv bevegelse som tar fordel av en doktrineforvirring omkring konservatismen ved å skape "falsk konservatisme" med liberalprogressive og libertarianske innslag for å opprettholde fordommer, skape eksklusjonsstemning og oppmuntre polarisering som selvsabotasje, som ved å stenge colleget fremfor å la "undermennesker" komme inn. Dette holder i livet den strukturelle rasismen som etter hvert ikke er lenge snakk om hudfarge, men også om sosialøkonomisk rangordning og kulturell identitet. 

De har fordel av den utdaterte konstitusjonens mangler ved at den opprinnelig var ment for et valgbart oligarki med sterke plutokratiske anføringer som hadde midten av 1800-tallet blitt dels tilsidesatt, dels omkonstruert for å skape et liberaldemokratisk system som begynte å fungere i "den progressive æren" 1900-1914 og fullføres i 1965 etter borgerrettighetsloven og liberalisering av det amerikanske lovverket hadde blitt gjennomdrevet. USA ble et "ekte" demokrati i dette året. Inntil da var demokrati bare for de utvalgte som lykte med å få innpass i det politiske systemet, først og fremst de anglosaksiske-protestantiske. Selv latinos, degos og wooks var ikke likestilt med de hvite fram til 1960-årene. 

Fremveksten av middelklassen som skjøt fart i mellomkrigstiden, er essensielt for USAs nasjonaløkonomi, men i 1929 hadde det blitt innlysende at kjøpekraften ikke hang med produksjonstakten fordi middelklassen var for liten til å opprettholde etterspørselen. Så Roosevelt gikk inn ikke bare for å reparere skadene, men også berge og styrke middelklassen som vokser for hver tiår som gikk siden 1933. Den amerikanske middelklassen ble en idealmodell for hele verden, ja endog i Sovjetunionen hvor man drømte om å oppnå den samme suksessen - uten hell. Et samfunn i sterk balanse hadde oppstått, selv om rasehygienske holdninger og sterk rasisme var sterk den gang. USA var ufattelig mektig, svært avansert og dermed i sannheten Fremtidens Stat som det hadde vært forestilt som, selv da Vietnam, rasefordommer, den andre rekonstruksjonen og ekstrem ulikhet sprang fram i 1960-1970. 

Amerikanerne var stolt av det de hadde oppnådd. Så begynte fallet, dixiekratene med deres nærfascistiske holdninger inkludert ettpartistatsidealer gikk over til det republikanske partiet som allerede i slutten på 1950-tallet bli et parti for de rike under kontroll av amoralske skurker som Nixon, som den rettskafne Warren mislikte meget intenst. En "konservativ vekking" tok seg til i vakuumet som oppsto etter fjerningen av Nixon, som tross alt var en karrierepolitiker med hang på kompromisspolitikk, i 1974-1981. Ford var en noksagt, og Carter var dessverre for snill for embetet i 1976-1981, slik at Reagan kunne vinne på hans naivisme - og på det amerikanske folkets manglende viten. 

For de var i en overgangstid da man trengte å bryte med fortidens fordomsfylte innhold og takle meget krevende omstendigheter knyttet til væremåte, teknologi, etc. etc. - og dermed evnet mange ikke å skue langt og bakover, som vi nå er i stand til å gjøre. Men amerikanerne hadde fram til 1994 alltid stemt på demokratene, som dermed siden 1932 hadde huset eller senatet under egen kontroll. I 1994 begynte det å skjære seg; republikanerne fikk mer makt - og det var ikke lenge en vilje for å straffe disse som gikk over strekningen. 

Republikanerne har nå tatt det for langt; det vil bli en borgerkrig i USA. For den omfattende misnøyen er så sterk, at man hittil var i stand til å distrahere den med kulturkrig, løgn og fordommer - men styrken er blitt for stor, for ukontrollert slik at et beist i form av MAGA med antikapitalistiske stemning har oppstått samtidig som den progressive delen av folket føres mot bristepunktet. 

Kommunismen vil vinne i slutten om dette vanviddet ikke stanses, for det Russell Kirk mente vil skje, vil i virkeligheten bli  framprovosert. Enten kommunisme eller føydalisme. Techmilliardørene med Thiel og Musk tar sikt på å skape en neoføydal verden, sannsynlig med teknokratiske anføring. 

[JK22]

https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/a-new-era-of-anti-intellectualism-and-what-all-senior-trump-officials-have-in-common-opinion/ar-AA1y7rJb?ocid=BingNewsSerp

The many controversial people appointed to the Trump administration, from Elon Musk to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have at least one thing in common: They dislike and distrust experts.

While anti-intellectualism and populism are nothing new in American life, there has hardly been an administration as seemingly committed to these worldviews.

Take President Donald Trump’s decision to nominate Kennedy, a well-known vaccine skeptic, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy, whose Senate confirmation hearing is Jan. 29, 2025, epitomizes the new American political ethos of populism and anti-intellectualism, or the idea that people hold negative feelings toward not just scientific research but those who produce it.

Anti-intellectual attacks on the scientific community have been increasing, and have become more partisan, in recent years.

For instance, Trump denigrated scientific experts on the campaign trail and in his first term in office. He called climate science a “hoax” and public health officials in his administration “idiots.”

Skepticism, false assertions

This rhetoric filtered into public discussion, as seen in viral social media posts mocking and attacking scientists like Dr. Anthony Fauci, or anti-mask protesters confronting health officials at public meetings and elsewhere.

Trump and Kennedy have cast doubt on vaccine safety and the medical scientific establishment. As far back as the Republican primary debates in 2016, Trump falsely asserted that childhood vaccines cause autism, in defiance of scientific consensus on the issue.

Kennedy’s long-term vaccine skepticism has also been well documented, though he himself denies it. More recently, he has been presenting himself as “pro-vaccine safety,” as one Republican senator put it, on the eve of Kennedy’s confirmation hearing.

Kennedy has mirrored Trump’s anti-intellectual rhetoric by referring to government health agency culture as “corrupt” and the agencies themselves as “sock puppets.”

If confirmed, Kennedy has vowed to turn this anti-intellectual rhetoric into action. He wants to replace over 600 employees in the National Institutes of Health with his own hires. He has also suggested cutting entire departments.

During one interview, Kennedy said, “In some categories, there are entire departments, like the nutrition department at the FDA, that are – that have to go.”

Populism across political spectrum

In lockstep with this anti-intellectual movement is a version of populism that people like RFK Jr. and Trump both espouse.

Populism is a worldview that pits average citizens against “the elites.” Who the elites are varies depending on the context, but in the contemporary political climate in the U.S., establishment politicians, scientists and organizations like pharmaceutical companies or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are frequently portrayed as such.

For instance, right-wing populists often portray government health agencies as colluding with multinational pharmaceutical companies to impose excessive regulations, mandate medical interventions and restrict personal freedoms.

Left-wing populists expose how Big Pharma manipulates the health care system, using their immense wealth and political influence to put profits over people, deliberately keeping lifesaving medications overpriced and out of reach – all of which has been said by politicians like Bernie Sanders.

The goal of a populist is to portray these elites as the enemy of the people and to root out the perceived “corruption” of the elites.

This worldview doesn’t just appeal to the far right. Historically in the United States, populism has been more of a force on the political left. To this day, it is present on the left through Sanders and similar politicians who rail against wealth inequality and the interests of the “millionaire class.”

In short, the Trump administration’s populist and anti-intellectual worldview does not map cleanly onto the liberal-conservative ideological divide in the U.S. That is why Kennedy, a lifelong Democrat and nephew of a Democratic president, might become a Cabinet member for a Republican president.

The cross-ideological appeal of populism and anti-intellectualism also partly explains why praise for Trump’s selection of Kennedy to head the Department of Health and Human Services came from all corners of society. Republican senators Ron Johnson and Josh Hawley lauded the move, as did basketball star Rudy Gobert and Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis.

Even former President Barack Obama once considered Kennedy for a Cabinet post in 2008.

Anger at elites

Why, then, is disdain for scientific experts appealing to so many Americans?

Much of the public supports this worldview because of perceived ineffectiveness and moral wrongs made by the elites. Factors such as the opioid crisis encouraged by predatory pharmaceutical companies, public confusion and dissatisfaction with changing health guidance in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the frequently prohibitive cost of health care and medicine have given some Americans reason to question their trust in science and medicine.

Populists have embraced popular and science-backed policies that align with an anti-elite stance. Kennedy, for example, supports decreasing the amount of ultra-processed foods in public school lunches and reducing toxic chemicals in the food supply and natural environment. These stances are backed by scientific evidence about how to improve public health. At the same time, they point to the harmful actions of a perceived corrupt elite – the profit-driven food industry.

It is, of course, reasonable to want to hold accountable both public officials for their policy decisions and scientists and pharmaceutical companies who engage in unethical behavior. Scientists should by no means be immune from scrutiny.

Examining, for example, what public health experts got wrong during the COVID-19 pandemic would be tremendously helpful from the standpoint of preparing for future public health crises, but also from the standpoint of rebuilding public trust in science, experts and institutions.

However, the Trump administration does not appear to be interested in pursuing good faith assessments. And Trump’s victory means he gets to implement his vision and appoint people he wants to carry it out. But words have consequences, and we have seen the impact of anti-vaccine rhetoric during the COVID-19 pandemic, where “red” counties and states had significantly lower vaccine intent and uptake compared with the “blue” counterparts.

Therefore, despite sounding appealing, Kennedy’s signature slogan, “Make America Healthy Again,” could – in discouraging policies and behaviors that have been proven effective against diseases and their crippling or deadly outcomes – bring about a true public health crisis.

Dominik Stecuła, Assistant Professor of Communication and Political Science, The Ohio State University; Kristin Lunz Trujillo, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of South Carolina, and Matt Motta, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Boston University

Denne artikkelen knytter antiintellektualismen med populistismen og at den ikke er beregnet til bare høyre- eller venstresiden. Men det er et langt og utilgivelig stort sprang til antivitenskap som i virkeligheten er altfor farlig for menneskeheten. 

[shockorshot]

2 hours ago, jallajall said:

One might think such a drubbing would motivate a party to examine its mistakes and take a hard look in the mirror. But that would not be the DNC way, or the MSNBC way.

Har Trump eller det Republikanske partiet godtatt at han tapte i 2020 mot Biden? Nei.

Har de taken a hard look in the mirror etter at de tapte 2018, 2020, eller den tapte red wave som skulle komme i 2022? Nei.

Så hvorfor i all verden forventer en høyrelent avis at demokratene skal take a hard look in the mirror? Spesielt når vi vet at demokratene har vært gjennomgående flinke til å vinne valg hvis vi ser på de siste 15 årene. Det er ganske hyklersk å alltid forvente at demokratene skal være de voksne i rommet som tar ansvar, når man er republikaner.

Hvilken evne til selvrefleksjon har det republikanske partiet? tOo BIg tO RIg

Personlig heier jeg på Martin O'Malley. Var fan av James Skoufis også, men han trakk seg.

Endret i går, 17:00 av shockorshot

[JK22]

https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/India/very-dangerous-trump-dumps-billions-of-gallons-of-water-farmers-were-counting-on-for-summer/ar-AA1ydrCb?ocid=BingNewsSerp&cvid=64e0860650e84e11b8e401efa6dec193&ei=20

Å, gud... han er gal. Han hadde på egenhånd uten å konsultere med eksperter eller lokalmyndighetspersoner beordret frislipp av reservevannet. Ja, du leser riktig; reservevann! Vi vet hvor viktig det er, man må alltid ha vann i reserve for strømproduksjon, vannregulering og flomkontroll som vanning av jordbruk. De to store demningsanleggene, Terminus Dam i Lake Kaweah og Schafer Dam i Lake Success som ligger i Tulare County i San Joaquin-dalen har blitt åpnet i vintertid slik at dette kom som et stort sjokk på bøndene som realisert at de måtte berge så mye vann som mulig for sommeren når det er lite tilgjengelig vann! Skal vedde på at bøndene som stemt republikansk, ikke innså dette. 

In a post to his official X account, Trump tweeted a "photo of beautiful water flow that I just opened in California," writing: "Today, 1.6 billion gallons and, in 3 days, it will be 5.2 billion gallons." He suggested that the water release would help officials in the Golden State fight wildfires in Southern California.

Galskap! Galskap! Dette er reservevann som trenges for den tørre sesongen i året 2025, som vil vare i mange måneder - i en oppvarmingsperiode som kan varer i flere tiår, om ikke århundrer! (klimaet i California er syklisk, våt/kald-periode (1800-2020) og tørr/varm-periode (startet siden 2020- ) California har allerede dårlig med vann fra før. 

“Every drop belongs to someone,” Kaweah River Watermaster Victor Hernandez told SJV Water. “The reservoir may belong to the federal government, but the water is ours. If someone’s playing political games with this water, it’s wrong.”

"A decision to take summer water from local farmers and dump it out of these reservoirs shows a complete lack of understanding of how the system works and sets a very dangerous precedent," Vink said. "This decision was clearly made by someone with no understanding of the system or the impacts that come from knee-jerk political actions."

Climate scientist Peter Gleick — who specializes in water issues — lamented on Bluesky that water resources farmers had been "relying on" were effectively "thrown away" by the Trump administration all for the sale of "a photo op & a bragging media post."

"This water will not be captured, will not be useful for cities or farms or firefighting," Gleick wrote. "It is now lost."

[sedsberg]

Trump vet hva han gjør. Han har garantert en plan. Som å hente vann fra sjøen og kjøre gjennom en sil for å fjerne saltet eller noe.

[JK22]

Så Trump ønsker å tvinge alle 505,000 venezuelanske flyktninger som hadde fått TPS-status som midtetidige beskyttede flyktninger av Biden-administrasjonen, rett tilbake til det brutale Madurodiktaturet i Venezuela. 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/outrageous-trump-administration-move-to-scale-back-protections-for-venezuelans-in-us-sparks-concern-in-south-florida/ar-AA1y9lDU?ocid=BingNewsSerp

“It’s outrageous that President Trump rescinded the extension of TPS that President Biden issued,” Wasserman Schultz said.

“The people who have fled the Maduro regime fled for their lives. Maduro uses oppression and funds from his oil sales to the United States and other countries to engage in terrorism. he aligns himself with the access of evil — Russia, China and Iran — and he is illegally in office,” she said.

“TPS is designed to make sure that people who would fear for their lives and their safety if they return to their country, that we can keep them safe here for a period of time,” Wasserman Schultz said. “It is dangerous for anyone to be returned to Venezuela, and Trump canceling the TPS for Venezuelans who are here sends them to almost certain harm if he starts deporting them.”

Wasserman Schultz also condemned Noem for the language she used during the "Fox & Friends" announcement, appearing to refer to Venezuelans in the U.S. as “dirtbags.”

“In fact, the secretary of Homeland Security called those Venezuelans that are my neighbors and friends dirtbags — dirtbags. The disrespect and the vulgarity and the condescension with which Trump and his administration look at people who have fled countries where there’s oppression to make a better way of life for themselves and keep their families safe is revolting,” Wasserman Schultz said.

Noem said that the “people of this country want these dirtbags out,” referring to “the Venezuelans that are here and members of TDA.” TDA is a reference to the Tren de Aragua, a gang based in Venezuela.

Disse venezuelanske flyktningene hadde sterk republikansk støtte fordi de kom fra et marxistiskinspirerte regime og dermed faller under kategorien som "frihetssøkende migranter" i øyne på den latinspråklige delen av republikanerne, spesielt kubaneramerikanerne som står sterk i Florida, hvor venezuelanerne var ønsket velkomne. 

For øyeblikket vil republikanerne i Florida beskytte venezuelanerne i egne delstat, så det kan oppstå åpen konflikt om Trump skulle deportere disse TPS-beskyttede flyktninger, spesielt fordi disse inneha verdi i form av høyutdanning i ung alder (14 % - mot bare 9 % i USA - !) og dermed er ettertraktet i arbeidsmarkedet. 

Det er knapt overraskende at Maduro sier ja, det er hans mål å tvinge flyktningene tilbake under hans kontroll. 

[AtterEnBruker]

JK22 skrev (40 minutter siden):

https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/India/very-dangerous-trump-dumps-billions-of-gallons-of-water-farmers-were-counting-on-for-summer/ar-AA1ydrCb?ocid=BingNewsSerp&cvid=64e0860650e84e11b8e401efa6dec193&ei=20

Å, gud... han er gal. Han hadde på egenhånd uten å konsultere med eksperter eller lokalmyndighetspersoner beordret frislipp av reservevannet. Ja, du leser riktig; reservevann! Vi vet hvor viktig det er, man må alltid ha vann i reserve for strømproduksjon, vannregulering og flomkontroll som vanning av jordbruk. De to store demningsanleggene, Terminus Dam i Lake Kaweah og Schafer Dam i Lake Success som ligger i Tulare County i San Joaquin-dalen har blitt åpnet i vintertid slik at dette kom som et stort sjokk på bøndene som realisert at de måtte berge så mye vann som mulig for sommeren når det er lite tilgjengelig vann! Skal vedde på at bøndene som stemt republikansk, ikke innså dette. 

In a post to his official X account, Trump tweeted a "photo of beautiful water flow that I just opened in California," writing: "Today, 1.6 billion gallons and, in 3 days, it will be 5.2 billion gallons." He suggested that the water release would help officials in the Golden State fight wildfires in Southern California.

Galskap! Galskap! Dette er reservevann som trenges for den tørre sesongen i året 2025, som vil vare i mange måneder - i en oppvarmingsperiode som kan varer i flere tiår, om ikke århundrer! (klimaet i California er syklisk, våt/kald-periode (1800-2020) og tørr/varm-periode (startet siden 2020- ) California har allerede dårlig med vann fra før. 

“Every drop belongs to someone,” Kaweah River Watermaster Victor Hernandez told SJV Water. “The reservoir may belong to the federal government, but the water is ours. If someone’s playing political games with this water, it’s wrong.”

"A decision to take summer water from local farmers and dump it out of these reservoirs shows a complete lack of understanding of how the system works and sets a very dangerous precedent," Vink said. "This decision was clearly made by someone with no understanding of the system or the impacts that come from knee-jerk political actions."

Climate scientist Peter Gleick — who specializes in water issues — lamented on Bluesky that water resources farmers had been "relying on" were effectively "thrown away" by the Trump administration all for the sale of "a photo op & a bragging media post."

"This water will not be captured, will not be useful for cities or farms or firefighting," Gleick wrote. "It is now lost."

Å herre... kommer de neste fire årene til å bli Amerikas "the great leap foreward"?

[SilverShaded]

sedsberg skrev (32 minutter siden):

Trump vet hva han gjør. Han har garantert en plan. Som å hente vann fra sjøen og kjøre gjennom en sil for å fjerne saltet eller noe.

Trump vet hva han gjør, men ikke noe i nærheten av det du foreslår.

Han hater selvsagt at California, den mest folkerike staten, er blått. Nå skal han ødelegge for alle de bøndene han kan. Når tørken setter inn og det ikke fins vann, kommer han til å "redde" dem og sende noen ladninger med vann bort dit, slik at han kan slå seg på brystet og foretelle dem hvor enestående han (og MAGA) er. Håpet er vel å farge California rødt.

[AlpakkaMafakka]

Red Frostraven skrev (19 timer siden):

Jeg tror jeg vet hva du gjør, du sier bare det stikk motsatte av hva som er sant, som en reversert kunstitg intelligens som ikke kan si noe som er riktig.

Det ville forklart mye.

Du skal få lov til å motbevise meg.

På hvilke konkrete områder mener du amerikanske gjennomsnittspersoner eller arbeiderklassepersoner kommer til å få det bedre?

Merk at jeg bokmerker svaret og kommer tilbake til det om 2 år.

Hans brukernavn er jo tåkefyrste. Han holder seg tro til det navnet.