United States Politics Thread 47

[alice]

Alberta wants to separate from Canada and is covertly/subtly asking the US for help.

Does this mean that if you want to travel from Vancouver to Regina, you'll have to go all the way around via Yellowknife?

[jcb]

Alberta wants to separate from Canada and is covertly/subtly asking the US for help.

And Jesse Ventura, former governor of Minnesota, recently suggested that Minnesota separate from the United States and join Canada.
- https://www.mlive.com/news/2026/01/form ... anada.html

[jcb]

More Epstein files just got released (even though all of them were supposed to already be released). It turns out that Bill Gates sucks and his wife divorced him years ago for good reasons!
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpdTnPWFjDo

[Raphael]

Reportedly, only half of the remaining files got released, and Bondi said the Justice Department was done with releasing files now. That might be an argument against zompist's assumption that they're a nothingburger.

[Raphael]

Oh, and Musk exchanged emails about visiting Epstein's island. And the guy thought, during his temporary argument with Trump, that it would be a good idea for him to remind the entire world of the existence of those files. Not the sharpest tool in the shed.

[Raphael]

I don't have any illusions about its importance, but just for the record, I'd like to note that a comment related to US politics that I posted on the Techdirt blog was named one of the comments of the week there: https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/01/fun ... hdirt-194/

(I would have posted that in the Happy Things Thread, but I didn't want to derail that thread.)

[MacAnDàil]

This reminds me, Trump loves to rant and rave about how poorly and dysfunctionally the countries of origin of many migrant to the USA are run, and how bad things look like there.

You know why those countries are so poorly run, Donald? You know why things are so bad there?

Because countries like that are usually run by people who love to pay out large amounts of public money to themselves. Because they’re usually run by people who love to name everything after themselves. Because they’re usually run by people who love to decorate everything in sight with lots of glittering gold. Because they’re usually run by people who love to have their subordinates praise them to high Heaven all the time. Because they’re usually run by people who let their armed goons do whatever they want. #

In short, because they’re run by people like you.

True comment that.

The Epstein island-Greenland link was made by Trevor Noah at the Grammys:

“Well there you have it, Song of the Year. Congratulations, Billie Eilish! Wow! That is a Grammy that every artist wants,” the longtime Grammy host said.

“Almost as much as Trump wants Greenland. Which makes sense. I mean, because Epstein’s island is gone, he needs a new one to hang out with Bill Clinton.”

Of course Trump wants to sue.

[rotting bones]

You gave the impression that nobody agreed with you, that your ideas were new and that nobody understood them. I tried to underline that the first of this can be true without the other two.

I have written long posts partly defending leftist theorists, even contemporary ones, from ZBBers: viewtopic.php?p=94517#p94517

So your claim is false unless you're talking about ZBBers rather than leftist theorists. If no ZBBer has agreed with me, my opinions can't have been copied from them.

Yes, the claim refers to ZBBers, as your previous post from the 4th:

Well, good for you, you've rediscovered what Noam Chomsky was saying 40 years ago.

I don't mean to be terribly hard on you, but sometimes it seems like you think you're the only one who's ever thought about this stuff.

I am in this forum. No one else has agreed with me so far.

Correct, I affirm both the posts you quoted simultaneously.

[rotting bones]

I hear Trump just shit his pants on live TV. Literally this time.

[jcb]

I hear Trump just shit his pants on live TV. Literally this time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyf_05SzgD4

[rotting bones]

Machado gave her Nobel medal to Trump, BTW.

[zompist]

Machado gave her Nobel medal to Trump, BTW.

And got nothing for it.

[rotting bones]

Machado gave her Nobel medal to Trump, BTW.

And got nothing for it.

It looks like for some people, sucking up is its own reward.

[Torco]

I don't want to sound conspiratorial, but on these things we almost never get the whole picture. it could have been any of, or a mixture of,

a man in black tells machado give him the price or get suicided
she got 100kusd to her personal account
she got six million more to her already us funded org, whatever it is
she got promises of more american boots on the ground which will happen
she got promises of more american boots on the ground which will not happen, but she doesn't know

it's not like i want to defend the woman, but when your mission is getting the us to invade your country, it's not irrational to tribute the king of the us

[zompist]

it's not like i want to defend the woman, but when your mission is getting the us to invade your country, it's not irrational to tribute the king of the us

Or maybe she is, like many Venezuelans, sick of the dictatorship, as well as personally offended by its fake election.

Oh wait Venezuelans are supposed to support the dictatorship, celebrate the deterioration of their country, repudiate the bourgeois idea of being able to determine their own fate, because the regime belongs to the correct side, the Red Side. Machado is the Wrong Side and thus must be slandered and opposed, maybe eliminated. Keep supporting the only good side, the Red Side, which is cooperating with Trump and continuing to rule under him because of proper Red reasons. Machado sucking up to Trump is is Bad because she is on the Bad Side. Rodríguez sucking up to Trump is Good because she is on the Red Side.

[jcb]

Chomsky is in the files. He helped Epstein try to rehabilitate his reputation.
- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... am-chomsky
- https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/2 ... -treatment

[rotting bones]

Fucking anarchists.

I hear the Epstein files were just scrubbed.

[rotting bones]

it's not like i want to defend the woman, but when your mission is getting the us to invade your country, it's not irrational to tribute the king of the us

Or maybe she is, like many Venezuelans, sick of the dictatorship, as well as personally offended by its fake election.

Oh wait Venezuelans are supposed to support the dictatorship, celebrate the deterioration of their country, repudiate the bourgeois idea of being able to determine their own fate, because the regime belongs to the correct side, the Red Side. Machado is the Wrong Side and thus must be slandered and opposed, maybe eliminated. Keep supporting the only good side, the Red Side, which is cooperating with Trump and continuing to rule under him because of proper Red reasons. Machado sucking up to Trump is is Bad because she is on the Bad Side. Rodríguez sucking up to Trump is Good because she is on the Red Side.

You have eaten rats all these days. Try dung this time. (Bengali idiom)

Better a native dictator than a foreign dictator like Trump. The far right thinks they can get along with far right parties in other countries, but they are wrong about that.

[rotting bones]

I don't want to sound conspiratorial, but on these things we almost never get the whole picture. it could have been any of, or a mixture of,

a man in black tells machado give him the price or get suicided
she got 100kusd to her personal account
she got six million more to her already us funded org, whatever it is
she got promises of more american boots on the ground which will happen
she got promises of more american boots on the ground which will not happen, but she doesn't know

it's not like i want to defend the woman, but when your mission is getting the us to invade your country, it's not irrational to tribute the king of the us

Trump has always wanted to invade Venezuela. Machado has always been sucking up to Trump.

[zompist]

Better a native dictator than a foreign dictator like Trump.

I don't understand how this is supposed to apply to Venezuela. Trump ran maybe the stupidest invention in a long string of US interventions in Latin America, not even replacing the dictatorial regime, just shuffling the figure at the top. The latest news seems to be that the regime is allowing private investors back in to extract oil, but it's not clear a) whether any companies are actually doing this, or b) whether the US or Venezuela is in charge of Venezuelan oil revenues.

Trump is not dictator of Venezuela, though he seems to think he is.

The far right thinks they can get along with far right parties in other countries, but they are wrong about that.

That certainly seems to be true about dealing with Trump. He's so toxic that many other far-right parties are distancing themselves from him.