Ribs here, but based on the good midwest tradition.

Congrats Mikey.

How is it on the first ballot if people switched from their initial votes?

Off the top of my head, can't you change your vote up until it's "locked" (I can't think of the correct word for finalizing the vote but you know what I mean)

GOP trust in elections nearly tripled from October to December.

Republicans more confident in 2024 election accuracy after Trump win: AP-NORC poll | AP News

It’s a Christmas miracle.

Looks like the GOP has settled on having one bill with all the tax cuts and spending plans lumped together.

I'm so old I remember when long bills were the very heart of tyranny. You can't take any GOP argument seriously.

dola

Facebook has completely capitulated to Trump.


Really bad signs all around. The powerful are all bending the knee even before Trump demands it.

And they are doing away with moderation to be more like X. I didn't really doubt that business interest would bow to fascism as it has always done in history. It is the speed which is surprising.

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Let's be clear: Facebook hasn't wanted to do moderation since forever. This just gives them a golden opportunity to throw off those shackles and ignore any outrage. None of these social media owners give a fuck about what lies are peddled on their platforms, or the harm they cause, as long as the engagement numbers and advertising numbers keep coming.

dola - I'll bet the Founding Fathers never thought it would be the First Amendment that would be the downfall of their Republic.

How is that happening?

Who knew that getting an AUSTRIAN citizenship for my family was the parachute we’d need just in case… Austria.


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Austria? Well, then g’day mate! Let’s put another shrimp on the Barbie!

Bezos is offering 40 mil for the rights to Melania's story. Just astonishing how quickly the billionaires decided to start bribing Trump.

Trump's renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

And we get a reiteration that he wants Greenland, Panama, and thinks the border with Canada is "arbitrary" and we protect them anyway and economic force will bring them in as a 51st state.

Yes, a "blowing sunshine up their asses" documentary directed by some dude "cancelled" years back for sexual assaults, I believe.

It's all just bullshit bluster, but invading Greenland would also be an existential crisis for NATO. What happens when one NATO nation attacks another?

My #1 hope for the second Trump administration is that he spends all his time on these dementia-addled goose chases that nothing really gets done. Just 4 years of solid crisis mode.

I just want the stock market to go up. Can I at least have that?

He is going to set back trust in America for the rest of our lives and probably our kids lives.

I think everything that has taken place after WW2 did a good job of that.

It's not a distraction for him, it's a distraction for the news, and a distraction for the people. There's something else at play, like the legal avenues he is going to skirt to make something even more illegal happen that has me concerned.

Riiiiiiight. The pariah of the world. I remember reading about that for the last 50 years.

Correct. The play is "flood the zone with shit" and it works embarrassingly well.

It isn't the endless wars we've started, the millions of innocent civilains we've killed, the genocides and terrorists we've funded, or the countless coups we've fermented all in the name of propping up a few oligarchs. It's Donald Trump trolling people on his shitty social media app which will cause the world to lose trust in the great United States.

Up to that point, they had unwavering trust in the country run by a guy with dementia who is taking advice from his crackhead son.

I think it's that you're more willing to blame the US for all the ills of the world than any sort of nuanced point of view. It's all so simple for you. Having said that Don Jr clearly still has his fathers ear.

But it's incredibly bleak how the entire GOP is now gleefully talking about taking over other countries.

There's still no bottom.

Right. Who can forget the time Reagan threatened to take of Canada or Kennedy threatened to take over Greenland.

Reagan illegally sold weapons to Iran to fund terrorist groups so they could interfere in other sovereign countries. He also more or less created Al-Qaeda which I'm sure the world loves him for. Kennedy escalated in Vietnam which led to the slaughter of millions of innocent civilians.

Like I've been saying, it seems you're more concerned with optics instead of what people actually do. Don't agree with what Trump is doing but at the end of the day it's just trolling people he knows he can get riled up. Expect more now that he's defeated both parties and has kind of run out of enemies.

Actually, I'm pretty sure he is just showing countries being greedy for more land to help normalize his buddy Putin.

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Are we still doing the Russia thing 8 years later? Need something new and fresh.

Trump certainly isn't talking about Putin. He's talking about Greenland, about Mexico, about Canada, but he's strangely silent on his country's actual enemy.

He specifically mentioned wanting Greenland because of Russian ships and that being bad for us. Kinda surprised me, actually, which is why I remembered it from watching the news last night.

The only way to be tough on Russia is to launder billions of dollars to connected defense contractors at the expense of countless innocent lives.

I did find this pretty funny.

Canada Lawmaker Suggests Letting 3 US States Join, Get Free Health Care

The funny thing is that it's likely the only way the Democrats could take control of the Senate any time soon. Make each province a state. Would guarantee the House too. 40 million new residents who are used to national health care.

Why are Democrats angry about his plan again? And why do they think Republicans would actually want to do it?

So it's a "plan" now?

Didn't take the Dems 4 years to get on board either.

Lowering the costs of what - cruises in the Gulf of America?

This whole Gulf name issue did make me think - who has naming rights to bodies of water, and how hasn't a corporation approached the government about an official rights deal?

Gulf of America, powered by Facebook.

Or, what if the US renamed the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as the Eastern Conference and Western Conference Bodies of Water brought to you by Deer Park?

I think a group in the Interior can change the name after they've spoken to all local governments involved. It happens regularly but not normally with something as big and notable as the Gulf of Mexico.

re: Greenland

Wiki has a summary of events/thoughts stretching back to Trump 1st term.

Proposals for the United States to purchase Greenland - Wikipedia.

Greatly simplified but from what I've read ...

1. Greenland wants to be independent from Denmark and is working towards that goal. There is some sort of understanding that Greenland is allowed to work towards independence, timeline is not well defined
2. Denmark is providing financial support/subsidies. Article hints that they are not providing too much (e.g. for airports, infrastructure) because they want to keep Greenland dependent on them
3. Greenlanders aren't that hot on Denmark either
4. Greenland has lots of natural resources (e.g. rare earth metals). They are also in a strategic location to monitor, stop etc. Russian/Chinese subs, ships etc.
5. Greenland doesn't want to be a US state but open to US investments and protection
6. Greenland will play the US interest against Denmark to see what she can get.

Still not sure how serious, serious Trump is but a scenario I can see playing out ...

I can't imagine the US militarily "invading" and occupying Greenland but can definitely see US "supporting" Greenlands independence (e.g. replacing Denmark's support/subsidies with US $) and helping push it through. Once, that is done, Greenland & US are free to negotiate more seriously. While Greenland remains an independent country, I can see the US becoming BFF with her.



FWIW, interesting thought exercise below on how much Greenland, if they sell, might sell for.

$42.6B is pretty cheap. But $533B to $1.7T seem more likely. For 57,000 Greenlanders ...

$42.6B / 57,000 = $747K
$533B / 57,000 = $9.3M
$1.7T / 57,000 = $29.8M

Yeah, if I lived in an independent Greenland, I'll take between $9.3M - $29.8M to be part of the US.

We just need to explain that we're here to liberate them from the evils of free Healthcare.

From what I’ve read, healthcare in Greenland isn’t all that great. Maybe a good compromise as part of the negotiations is insist US setup a Ramstein-like hospital and free access.

https://traveltrade.visitgreenland.c...nland-2024.pdf

What is the fascination with Greenland anyway besides someone explaining who Polk was to Trump?

How much would anyone bet that Trump would probably spell it Golf of America?

It's a land full of a GREEN!

I'd put halfway decent odds that he doesn't know Greenland is actually mostly covered in ice.

I bet Don Jr. knew that but thought it was a different kind...