United States Politics Thread 47

[foxcatdog]

Update on TrumpCoin: Some people have already lost their life savings by "investing" in it!
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYpbiQW3X1k

I can't help but think of this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CR8u-2TKb0 . I must conclude that cryptocurrency scams are now legal in the United States of America.

I am frankly of the belief that scam coins are just a form of gambling where entrants are simply playing a game of trying to pull one over each other before it becomes too worthless to scam with.

You would be correct, plus they contribute to climate change. Also i have a sneaking suspicion they just make the wealthy even more wealthy.

[keenir]

Trump, you ran on a platform of stopping all the crime - even crime that other Presidents enabled or ignored.

...and your excuse for pardoning the January 6ers...is "well lots of murderers get away with murder, don't get punished for it'??

[Linguoboy]

Trump, you ran on a platform of stopping all the crime - even crime that other Presidents enabled or ignored.

...and your excuse for pardoning the January 6ers...is "well lots of murderers get away with murder, don't get punished for it'??

Wow, that's even weaker than Johnson's "We believe in second chances."

(Oh yeah, Mike? How 'bout you release several thousand non-violent drug offenders then and expunge their convictions?)

[keenir]

Trump, you ran on a platform of stopping all the crime - even crime that other Presidents enabled or ignored.

...and your excuse for pardoning the January 6ers...is "well lots of murderers get away with murder, don't get punished for it'??

Wow, that's even weaker than Johnson's "We believe in second chances."

*nods*


To be fair (*gasp*) while a lot of people are saying things along the lines of "this is an example of Trump pushing the limits early on, to see how far he can get away with pushing"...to me, this is a demonstration of something he always said, in the run-up to this term and his prior one: he values loyalty above all.

(also a slight hearkening back to his "anyone who punches a news person, I'll pay for his defense")...yeah, i don't recall him doing that, but a pardon is a pretty good defense too. (though one that admits guilt, as i understand it* )


* = and not purely an understanding based on, a President wouldn't issue a Thanksgiving pardon to someone who isn't a turkey.
{sorry, i really needed some humor after that post i made, however poor the humor is}

[jcb]

Trump, in his haste to attack trans people, has accidentally declared that all people are now female:
- https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential ... overnment/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkBKy6uWppk
- https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-trans- ... 00371.html

This deliberate rollback of trans and other LGBTQ+ rights and protections also includes a section with definitions that belies basic biology: claiming that “‘female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell,” and “‘male’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”

“It’s especially egregious that this order defines ‘sex’ as starting ‘at conception,’ which is impossible,” says Ash Lazarus Orr, press relations manager at Advocates for Trans Equality. “While it’s possible to know chromosomal information, human embryos don’t show sexual differentiation at that stage — and all embryos initially develop along ‘female’ lines until later in development.”

Emphasis mine.

I am frankly of the belief that scam coins are just a form of gambling where entrants are simply playing a game of trying to pull one over each other before it becomes too worthless to scam with.

Yes, the people that got scammed are themselves aspiring scammers, whether they realize it or not. Such is a zero-sum game where nothing of value is produced.

[jcb]

I plan on considering it a shibboleth and assuming the worst about anyone who calls it the Gulf of America.

To be honest, I'm surprised that Trump hasn't tried renaming some island after himself yet.

[zompist]

Trump, in his haste to attack trans people, has accidentally declared that all people are now female:

This deliberate rollback of trans and other LGBTQ+ rights and protections also includes a section with definitions that belies basic biology: claiming that “‘female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell,” and “‘male’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”

It's an incoherent attempt to mix science and religion. At conception the zygote is a single cell and it doesn't "belong" to any sex.

As usual, in their haste to demonize trans people, they're going to cause problems for entirely different people, such as intersex people.

I imagine a lawyer could have a field day with this undefined notion of belonging to a sex at all. How do you tell? How do you tell what it was at conception? Maybe it's recorded in the baby's Facebook cookies these days.

[jcb]

Trump suggests solving the Israel-Palestine problem by "cleaning out" all Palestinians from Gaza.
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/26/worl ... egypt.html
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPxOyoCz82k

[Linguoboy]

Just in time for International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

[Ahzoh]

If Canada becomes the 51st state, it might actually be relevant to talk about Canadian politics in here, heh.

The shit going on in the US is like seeing a bomb explode and watching as the shockwave slowly approaches me. For now my personal life is fine and unaffected by what's going on over there, but it just feels like that shockwave is going to reach me eventually, if it hasn't already.

Or like a neighboring train that's dangerously close to intersecting into my life's own rail track.

I mean, it's already affecting my country, Canada, with the threat of tariffs and such. And depending on how it goes, we might have a new sane PM or a pathetic Trump glazer.

[Otto Kretschmer]

It would make much more sense for the US to join Canada. At least Americans would gain free healthcare and a much cheaper higher education.

[Linguoboy]

The shit going on in the US is like seeing a bomb explode and watching as the shockwave slowly approaches me. For now my personal life is fine and unaffected by what's going on over there, but it just feels like that shockwave is going to reach me eventually, if it hasn't already.

That's kind of how it feels here, since, in some ways, the USA is still 50 countries in a trenchcoat pretending to be one big one. I'm in the bluest city in a rather blue state with a Dem governor who has vocally rebuffed Trump's provocations. So far, the only real consequences we've seen are increased ICE raids in the city and suburbs. But we know there'll be more coming. Republicans have been jonesing to make an example out of Chicago for years now, so at this point it's just a question of what kind of fuckery they'll come up with.

[jcb]

"I didn't think that the leopards would deport *my* wife!" says local man:
- https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/sout ... ids-trump/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Qooqk_kgPE

Phil McGraw (AKA "Dr Phil") is tagging along on ICE raids, claiming it's for "transparency", when it's really just sensationalizing and profiting off of other people's misery, as is usual for his show.
- https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/01/ ... nts-raids/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIYfOCkJmFc

[jcb]

I missed this a couple days ago. Trump's (new) official presidential portrait has dim lighting that makes him look like like a comic book super villain:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... rtrait.jpg


He's even doing "chin down, eyes up" a little bit: https://youtu.be/z9dg8PI2sEg?si=z86KiCCm12jGErKE

This feels like an omen for more awful things to come.

[zompist]

That's kind of how it feels here, since, in some ways, the USA is still 50 countries in a trenchcoat pretending to be one big one. I'm in the bluest city in a rather blue state with a Dem governor who has vocally rebuffed Trump's provocations. So far, the only real consequences we've seen are increased ICE raids in the city and suburbs. But we know there'll be more coming. Republicans have been jonesing to make an example out of Chicago for years now, so at this point it's just a question of what kind of fuckery they'll come up with.

The bomb has already dropped. I'll let box from Mefi summarize it. The discussion there gives a lot more specifics.
Hundreds of billions of dollars of useful government just went away, along with a lot of jobs dependent on it.

Legal battle looms (AP, NYT) after Trump freezes federal grant funding (Reuters, WaPo). Originally reported by Marisa Kabas (The Handbasket), Steve Vladeck offers an explainer (One First) on the 1974 Impoundment Control Act and related constitutional issues. The freeze has already been challenged in a lawsuit (Reuters).

The list of programs affected includes the Department of Agriculture’s tribal food sovereignty program, Head Start, the Veterans’ Affairs Department’s suicide prevention and legal services grants, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance, or LIHEAP, program, Meals on Wheels, and numerous sexual assault prevention programs within the Department of Justice.

[Travis B.]

Personally, I have no sympathy for anyone who voted for -- or chose to not vote against (and yes, this includes you third-party voters) -- a leopard eating their face. They deserve to have their faces eaten.

[Ahzoh]

The shit going on in the US is like seeing a bomb explode and watching as the shockwave slowly approaches me. For now my personal life is fine and unaffected by what's going on over there, but it just feels like that shockwave is going to reach me eventually, if it hasn't already.

That's kind of how it feels here, since, in some ways, the USA is still 50 countries in a trenchcoat pretending to be one big one. I'm in the bluest city in a rather blue state with a Dem governor who has vocally rebuffed Trump's provocations. So far, the only real consequences we've seen are increased ICE raids in the city and suburbs. But we know there'll be more coming. Republicans have been jonesing to make an example out of Chicago for years now, so at this point it's just a question of what kind of fuckery they'll come up with.

I recall reading something about how the United States is actually composed of six distinct nations and thus would constitute as a multinational state.

[keenir]

I recall reading something about how the United States is actually composed of six distinct nations and thus would constitute as a multinational state.

If you're referring to what I think you are, that was a book...in it, each "nation" of the US had a specialty, an ecotype, and a history - ie, Confederacy, Pacifica, etc.

[Ahzoh]

I recall reading something about how the United States is actually composed of six distinct nations and thus would constitute as a multinational state.

If you're referring to what I think you are, that was a book...in it, each "nation" of the US had a specialty, an ecotype, and a history - ie, Confederacy, Pacifica, etc.

No, it wasn't a book, it was an article and not an article referencing a book either.

[Ares Land]

That idea comes up every once in a while.
One book I remember is The Nine Nations of North America but similar ideas come up once in a while. It never really impresses me, I must say. I think all countries have distinct (sometimes quite distinct) cultures within their borders which rarely follow administrative lines -- though as someone not intimately familiar with American culture, it's useful to know what the cultural regions are!

Relating to linguoboy's observation though, it's always surprising to us foreigners (especially those of us not familiar with federal systems) how much happens at the state level, and that the President has little power domestically compared to what we'd expect.