I think technically he could order someone with the legal authority to use lethal force to do that. So probably the NSA or CIA.

Dat cough he had in North Carolina today jeeeeesus I’ve had a cough like that before and the cold that goes with it is an ass kicker.

Oh noooooo

Ok sure but if Person U from a large city comes to the city council meeting and asks for help because their neighbor, Person R, is building a new garage on Person U’s property, it’s understandable that people from around the city - no matter how far afield - might express support for Person U.

At the same time, if Person T or Person I or Person M from far across the city don’t express support, so what? What does it matter? Maybe they’re afraid of Person R. Maybe they truly don’t care. Maybe they hate person U.

Saudi Arabia, India, South Africa, Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates,

None of these “attenders” are in the same region as Ukraine.

At least they didn’t ignore the terrain alarm.

I read somewhere but can’t find it now about a time where a plane crashed or nearly crashed because the older pilot was sure the “terrain” alarm was a mistake and ignored the directive to pull up. I believe they were flying on instruments (common these days at night or poor visibility).

I’m guessing they mean like in the absence of energy, right? Because can’t massless photons warp spacetime as the get to higher and higher energies?

I think he’s probably just acting

I read a pretty convincing article title and subheading implying that the best use for so called “AI” would be to replace all corporate CEOs with it.

I didn’t read the article but given how I’ve seen most CEOs behave it would probably be trivial to automate their behavior. Pursue short term profit boosts with no eye to the long term, cut workers and/or pay and/or benefits at every opportunity, attempt to deny unionization to the employees, tell the board and shareholders that everything is great, tell the employees that everything sucks, …

This seems like a perfect opportunity for a counter intelligence operation, though. Yeah China wants our former military but since they’re military it seems like an easy lift to convert them into US assets either misinforming or sabotaging China.

Most of the military people I know took their oath to the Constitution seriously. I’m sure if the spooks at the CIA or NSA or whatever the new secret spy org is called asked, they could find some soon to retire guys who want to help out.

I’ll take the 34/34 but I have indeed seen a lot of “this just proves it was rigged from the start” etc etc already.

If Trump had allowed his lawyers to mount the best defense they could, he’d probably have a decent chance at complete acquittal or a hung jury.

Instead he forced them to perform a “defense” aimed at his base and maybe some people with “soft” dislike of him and most importantly aimed at hurting his “enemies” and puffing up his ego.

I did hear a persuasive argument that he might be acquitted on the charges related to checks he didn’t personally sign (his sons signed instead) but get convicted on the checks he did sign. From what was reported that means it’s possible the first 10 verdicts will be “not guilty” and the last 20+ will be “guilty.”

I actually sort of hope that’s what happens because 1) it will prove the jury wasn’t out to get him and 2) he’ll be feeling really good for those first verdicts then get gut punched for the last ones.

You forget your place, comrade.

I wonder if this is the harbinger of a bunch of companies breaking up after decades of consolidation.

It would definitely be good to have a big round of breakups to get competition going again. Then we just have to fight against the consolidation that will start up in 20-30 years.

Now do the banks and grocery stores and airlines and car companies and farming and…

There was a part of me that held out hope that she would at a minimum just not endorse Trump. Seems like she’s decided to try to be his VP pick. Probably since Noem the dog slayer became unrealistic.

Indeed with Haley endorsing Trump now I think all the Trump cosplay idiots who’ve been showing up to court in Manhattan can hang it up.

But for a few years there they made a LOT of money!

What Republicans realized decades ago is this is fundamentally true. Every election is the most important election. They just leave off the “…so far” that should be at the end of the statement.

I think before Reagan (or maybe Gingrich) people could reasonably see some elections as less consequential than others. But the Republicans realized that it’s all about building. Build a bench of charismatic, intelligent, possibly sociopathic individuals. Get them in local government and then state government and then federal government. Tell your base voters that you’re building something that will one day pay off.

Just keep building, just keep building, and one day you have a juggernaut. Especially if your opponents didn’t build to match.

Democrats spent the 80s and 90s assuming the status was quo. They spent the last half of the 90s and the 00s living in the fantasy that what people liked about Clinton was the fiscal conservatism without the religion, so they should be more conservative.

Only very recently have progressives started breaking through.

Now we have to build.

Luckily the Republicans have hitched their wagon to a human wrecking ball. That might let Democrats catch up sooner than they otherwise would.

He’s doing what all the “everybody could be rich if they just did X” jackasses do: see some people who don’t have money make bad decisions and generalize it to all people who don’t have money.

Middle aged parents with 2-3 kids and jobs in the $40k to $60k range aren’t going out all the time, buying the latest gadget, buying new cars, etc. They’re scraping by.

They could do some “personal development” if they had the time and energy after working full time and caring for children. But they don’t.

Actually I’d like to see a comparison of the number of people in different income groups who “splurge” on the stuff Buffet is accusing them of versus those who have to “splurge” on an unexpected expense like a medical condition or fixing a broken car or an unexpected home repair. I’m betting people actually end up spending money on the latter way more than the former.

And it’s just disgusting hearing him complain about people using credit cards when he and all the other economic vampires in his cohort have been purposefully restricting wage growth since the 1970s when they introduced credit cards as a trap for young people who expected their quality of life to increase with increasing productivity the way it had for decades before.

We need to go back to a 90% or higher tax rate on income over some threshold, and fix the loopholes that let wealthy people have income that doesn’t count as income. Especially the “take a loan and pay that back and all the activity there doesn’t count as income for tax purposes” bullshit.

And tax corporate profits more, and make a corporate tax system that rewards real R&D (while auditing to prevent fake tax shelter R&D), rewards higher employee salaries and better benefits (instead of taxing those), and rewards infrastructure investments like new factories but also investments in efficiency, water use reduction, etc.