The Donald vs Big Tech

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Presumably the main reason for Trump to do this is to bully both Canadian and Mexican citizens into putting MAGA-friendly leaders in power...? I don't really know about Mexico so well, but from what I've gathered there are quite a lot of Canadians who'd be all too willing to blame Trudeau rather than Trump, and I presume there's no shortage of "evidence" flying around as to why that is "in fact" the case...?

[Yung Led Zeppelin]

French made documentary here, but there's almost no narration at all beyond the intro, just local folk talking with French subtitles. Taking place in a small town in Pennsylvania, it follows two rival campaigns to get school commission representatives elected, Democrats and "moderate" Republicans on one side up against Christian nationalist MAGA-leaning Republicans on the other. Some of the scenes are just incredible. Notably some of them, if you kept the dialogue the same, word for word, but dressed them up to look like Muslims, people would immediately be saying it was some kind of radicalization/terrorist training group. At one point, a state representative is asked by an elderly man if he would support legislation against military-grade assault weapons being available to the public. Representative says no. Elderly man asks for a valid reason why they should be available, why someone would buy something like that. The representative for the state of Pennsylvania replies, "Hamas come to mind. Like, Hamas coming into your kibbutz. It'd be real nice to have an AR-15."

https://youtu.be/lX35yUAtWuI?si=UNyia0IrU0wpX0To

This is excellent.

Got a bit distracted with the mentions of "Kristy Moore" and "Tom Jones" alright though 

[Anvil]

Trump has always been anti-trade, and has never liked the fact that Mexico and Canada both benefitted more from the NAFTA than the US did.  It is why he renegotiated the agreement in his first term.   He has always campaigned on that premise that trade was bad for all his elections. 

[Ducky]

AKA he's a dumb cunt and doesn't understand how trade works.

Like he's so old and senile that he'd barely qualify as a Walmart greeter.

[Bürggermeister]

He wants to put pressure and get Maga clones installed in both states, when he'll ease off. It's vastly more sinister than ineptitude. He's like a fake-tan Putin.

[Ducky]

Let the gaslighting begin!

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/white-house-mexico-is-serious-canada-appears-have-misunderstood-trumps-executive-2025-02-03/

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

This'd be hilarious no matter who it happened to, but that said... couldn't have happened to a better bunch 

The Proud Boys no longer have control over their own name.

Under a ruling by a Washington judge on Monday, the infamous far-right group was stripped of control over the trademark "Proud Boys" and was barred from selling any merchandise with either its name or its symbols without the consent of a Black church in Washington that its members vandalized. In June 2023, the church won a $2.8 million default judgment against the Proud Boys after the organization's former leader, Enrique Tarrio, and several of his subordinates attacked it in a night of violence after a pro-Trump rally in December 2020.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/us/politics/proud-boys.html

[Ducky]

Has this been posted yet? Can barely keep up with these cunts.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/white-house-preparing-executive-order-abolish-department-education-rcna190205

[Ollkiller]

Has this been posted yet? Can barely keep up with these cunts.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/white-house-preparing-executive-order-abolish-department-education-rcna190205

The last paragraph of that article, where it outlines implementing a new system to certify teachers who embrace patriotic values and removing radicals who have infiltrated the Dept of Education. OK, so McCarthyism is back. Think like us or else.

Also seen there that FBI agents have filed a lawsuit to stop FBI agents being named as working on Jan 8th cases. The FBI supposedly handed over 5000 names to the DOJ that worked on various said cases. A lot of these agents are just posted to a case. Mental stuff.

[Ducky]

May as well have a giant, neon sign flashing "McCarthyism" at the rate they're going for sure.

You'd have to wonder does the hamster working the controls in this clown's head ever get a day off?

https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-says-us-will-take-over-gaza-strip-2025-02-05/

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

This was expected. It's exactly why the worst of Israel (Ben Gvir, Smotrich, Bibi) were wetting themselves at the mere prospect of Trump winning. What I found maybe more interesting is how casually, impassively, he describes consequences in a way that makes it so clear that war crimes were committed, describing Gaza as "a pure demolition site," "a pile of rubble," etc.

[Eoin McLove]

Has this been posted yet? Can barely keep up with these cunts.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/white-house-preparing-executive-order-abolish-department-education-rcna190205

The last paragraph of that article, where it outlines implementing a new system to certify teachers who embrace patriotic values and removing radicals who have infiltrated the Dept of Education. OK, so McCarthyism is back. Think like us or else.

Also seen there that FBI agents have filed a lawsuit to stop FBI agents being named as working on Jan 8th cases. The FBI supposedly handed over 5000 names to the DOJ that worked on various said cases. A lot of these agents are just posted to a case. Mental stuff.

Unsurprising that there is a swing in the direct opposite direction considering how schools have been pushing their own nutty ideologies in recent years over there. I think it is preposterous of Trump to go bull at a gate, but what would you expect from him. Probably would have been good to see a reining in of stuff like diversity hires, gender pronoun silliness and whatever other "progressive" crap was being peddled in schools over there. But this is not the answer.

The politics of revenge and petty grievances is no good.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

I've still never seen much in the way of concrete demonstration that DEI was leading to people getting jobs they weren't qualified for. Sure, it's something that's been said a lot, but you almost never see any kind of concrete evidence for it. And given that most of Trump's top ministerial choices are unqualified, you have to realize that attacks against DEI really were never about whether those employed were qualified or not, i.e. the only thing that actually matters. A highly decorated four-star African-American general has just been replaced by a TV personality as Secretary for Defense and head of the Pentagon. Because he's a (white) Christian nationalist. That's the kind of de facto DEI that's dangerous and worrying.

[Eoin McLove]

Yes, it's insane. A massive over correction that will lead god knows where. But this is what the people voted for en masse, so people over there are unhappy with whatever the Democrats were up to the past few years. I mean, to vote himself back in despite all of the chaos and divisiveness he brought with him, or exposed, last time doesn't reflect brilliantly on the left. Both sides have sunk themselves into two quite different pools of shit.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

There is no left in the US. The Dems are pretty much exactly aligned with FFG, so centre-right economically with a sprinkling of cultural liberalism designed to distract more than anything else. Distract those for it and those against it equally, that is. There's a vanishing minority any of it makes a blind bit of concrete difference to, while the real ball, the things that make a real difference to everyday quality of life, are pushed into the background, by the Dems to do the minimum necessary to keep as many people as possible docile, by MAGA so that they can get away with their own economic and cultural social engineering. Just like the Satanic Panic of the late 80s/early 90s™, except that this time round one party has decided it's in their favour to promote what MAGA are calling "Satanism"/"Marxism" (synonyms in the US anyway).