Politics Thread!

[F-ZeroOne]

US charm offensive continues; emphasis on the "offensive":

https://www.lbc.co.uk/world-news/us-pre ... on-threat/

Meanwhile, Poland wants to introduce military training for all adult men and increase the size of its military by 600,000 personnel (!). Given as I've previously stated they've selected "Buy All" when it comes to military hardware I don't think they're playing for the diplomatic victory...

[F-ZeroOne]

These games you play, they're gonna end in more than tears some day...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -trump-dei

[KlaxonCow]

OTOH, it might be early stage Alzheimer;s.

Or, you know, just plain stupidity.

I don't know how you'd even detect early stage Alzheimers with Trump.

Because, like, you need a baseline to compare it with. But he's always been thick as shit and a complete dick. So how could you even tell?


Like, the only reason that Trump does a cameo in Home Alone 2 is because he wouldn't let them use the building unless they put him into the film.

[PFVA]

No comment. I just read this:

NASA has abruptly closed its chief-scientist office, along with 2 other offices, firing 23 employees. The 10 March action leaves the agency without a way of feeding independent science advice to its topmost leadership, at a time when it is talking about sending astronauts to the Moon and developing plans to go onwards to Mars.
...
The offices closed by NASA are its Office of the Chief Scientist; its Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy; and the diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility branch of its Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity.
.....
Both offices advise NASA’s chief, or administrator, on scientific and technical matters. Petro is filling this position until Trump’s nominee, billionaire and private astronaut Jared Isaacman — a friend of Musk — is confirmed by the US Senate.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586- ... 9-50166228

[KlaxonCow]

I just heard someone make an excellent point about Trump's obsession with making Canada the 51st state.

If Canada was the 51st state then, with 40 million people, it actually has a slightly larger population than California - America's current most populous state - so, in the electoral college, it would have at least 54 votes.

Canada is never going to vote for Trump. Ever. And I severely doubt that the Republicans in general would get very far in a country that used to have universal healthcare until they were brow-beat into joining the USA by a horrific orange clown dictator that they - like the rest of the planet - have no idea how the hell anyone in America is able to take this moron remotely seriously.

So Trump is basically waging a crusade to ensure that the Republicans will never win election ever again. Between Canada and California and New York - all liberal states - that's 136 votes of the 270 needed to win.

Or, put another way, adding Canada cancels out Texas voting Republican and gives the Democrats an extra 14 votes on top.

The problem with Jesusland's reliance on faith is they don't comprehend how arithmetic works. So, sure, add Canada to your Empire, and then find out that you're easily outnumbered by "the United States of Canada" and you actually just made "Jesusland" a colony of "the United States of Canada" rather than the other way around.

Indeed, Democrats can win votes in Canada by promising to bring back their universal healthcare. And California and Massachusetts already thinks that's a great idea, but they previously couldn't out-vote the rednecks. Now they can comfortably win every time.

Canada's fucking massive. And you're going to add it as a single US state?

Of course, this is because Trump has never had a coherent thought in his entire life, so it goes without saying. But, to state the obvious, Trump has not thought this through.

[KlaxonCow]

Greenland's population is a tenth that of Wyoming (3 electoral college votes). But you can't have fractions of vote, so they'll have to have at least 1 vote.

Mexico's population is 130 million (!) so it's over 3 times more than California or Canada. So that's 175 electoral college votes in one go.

Also, of course, if the reason for this trade war is that Canada and Mexico are not stopping fentanyl entering the country, then adding them to the continental United States makes that problem worse, because now you do not have any internal borders at all.

Trump has visions of himself as Genghis Kahn, conquering the world. But he forgot those Genghis didn't have elections and votes to be worried about.

[tufty]

Genghis Khan probably died from plague. A global pandemic...

[F-ZeroOne]

Of course, if you don't have elections in the first place...

[zip accident]

I just heard someone make an excellent point about Trump's obsession with making Canada the 51st state.

If Canada was the 51st state then, with 40 million people, it actually has a slightly larger population than California - America's current most populous state - so, in the electoral college, it would have at least 54 votes.

Canada is never going to vote for Trump. Ever. And I severely doubt that the Republicans in general would get very far in a country that used to have universal healthcare until they were brow-beat into joining the USA by a horrific orange clown dictator that they - like the rest of the planet - have no idea how the hell anyone in America is able to take this moron remotely seriously.

So Trump is basically waging a crusade to ensure that the Republicans will never win election ever again. Between Canada and California and New York - all liberal states - that's 136 votes of the 270 needed to win.

Or, put another way, adding Canada cancels out Texas voting Republican and gives the Democrats an extra 14 votes on top.

The problem with Jesusland's reliance on faith is they don't comprehend how arithmetic works. So, sure, add Canada to your Empire, and then find out that you're easily outnumbered by "the United States of Canada" and you actually just made "Jesusland" a colony of "the United States of Canada" rather than the other way around.

Indeed, Democrats can win votes in Canada by promising to bring back their universal healthcare. And California and Massachusetts already thinks that's a great idea, but they previously couldn't out-vote the rednecks. Now they can comfortably win every time.

Canada's fucking massive. And you're going to add it as a single US state?

Of course, this is because Trump has never had a coherent thought in his entire life, so it goes without saying. But, to state the obvious, Trump has not thought this through.

They don't have to get votes. Puerto Rico has yet to become a state, it's:

an unincorporated territory of the United States under the designation of commonwealth.

In 1898, following the Spanish–American War, Puerto Rico was acquired by the United States.[k][21][31]

Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917 and can move freely between the archipelago and the mainland.[32] However, residents of Puerto Rico are disenfranchised from federal elections[33] and generally do not pay federal income tax.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico

Trump can have Canada, Mexico and Greenland and not lose any presidential votes by so doing. If he makes them states, he's going to have to stop allowing votes, and maybe that's the plan, but if he wants to keep the appearance of votes, making those countries unincorporated territories would do the job quite nicely.

Of course, if you don't have elections in the first place...

Entirely plausible, but how he convinces the military that's legit is a puzzle, though he has fired the most likely military democracy supporters.

[PFVA]

I think he is just thinking of taking advantage of global warming and even helping it to get control of everything that can be explored in Canada and Greenland. Next he is going to want Antartica too. And the Moon and Mars.

[Harlequin]

Of course, if you don't have elections in the first place...

Entirely plausible, but how he convinces the military that's legit is a puzzle, though he has fired the most likely military democracy supporters.

A National Emergency requiring martial law due to an interminable fight against an abstract enemy threatening the entire country? Drugs, terror, chemicals, militant radical socialism ...

[KlaxonCow]

They don't have to get votes.

Of course. But Trump is the one explicitly saying he wants Canada to be the 51st state.

His exact words, repeated many times: "51st state".

I'm not the one saying it. Trump's saying it, and I'm just extrapolating what that means regards electoral college votes, as Canada would become the most populous state, if entered into the union as "the 51st state". Skewing the balance between Republicans and Democrats towards the liberal end, going by Canada's political track record.

Like, I don't think this is a good idea. That's what I'm saying. I'm pointing out why, even on Trump's own terms, this makes no fucking sense.

[KlaxonCow]

I think he is just thinking of taking advantage of global warming and even helping it to get control of everything that can be explored in Canada and Greenland. Next he is going to want Antartica too. And the Moon and Mars.

Totally.

I've said before to ignore words and look at actions. Because words can lie, but actions can't.

And Trump perfectly embodies that, as he and his MAGA supporters deny climate change with their words. But then he's already making plans to re-locate the United States Northwards and abandon the South as uninhabitable.

It's the only way Greenland makes sense. No-one has ever looked at Greenland as a territory to conquer because it's covered in permafrost - so the land itself is useless - and with the Arctic ice sheets, there is no Northern passage. Everyone's ignored it because it offers nothing.

The only way annexing Greenland makes sense is through climate change. Because then the permafrost melts - releasing vast tracts of land - and the Northern passage opens up, as the Arctic ice sheets vanish.

He denies climate change with his words, but with his actions, it's the most concrete "planning for our survival when climate change really digs in and makes the South uninhabitable" that any politician's ever openly done. As Trump has no guile and no stealth whatsoever, so what he's really thinking is blatantly obvious.

I know that I often go on about renewables and the looming energy crisis and so forth, and started a thread all about "the Future of Energy". But this is basically why.

Now everyone can hopefully begin to see why I place such emphasis on it - and why I always talk about it in socio-economic terms, not "saving the planet". Or, more precisely, it's not about saving the planet. It's about saving ourselves. It's about saving modern civilisation from collapse.

And now that "the other side" is revealing its hand - Trump's talk of annexing Canada and Greenland - perhaps people can see the true importance of this. There will be wars. There will be mass global migration - ironically, these right-wingers are all winning elections because that's already began happening. There will be catastrophes, collapses and mass deaths.

We must begin to make the transition. If you can, start now. The "default" - fossil fuels - are unsustainable and oil will be permanently dead in less than 40 years. There will be wars over what's left. There's going to be very, very painful upheaval.

This is the thing that's so hard to get people to understand. The status quo cannot be "business as usual" because it's falling apart, heading towards its final extinction. Transition is the way out. People's instincts are to cling to what they know and keep going with what's always been the case. But that's a bad instinct here, as it's going to get us all killed.

"The system" is collapsing. Get out of that system and move as far as you can to self-sufficiency. Solar panels and batteries. Insulation. Waste water recycling. The more, the better. Because depending on "the system" when it's inevitably going to collapse soon is not the good path forward.

Trump and the fossil fuel dictators are already making their future plans to continue profiting, as the world collapses. We need to also be making our own plans to have nothing whatsoever to do with this anymore, and to "de-fund" the tyrants. Once and for all.

[zip accident]

Hm, I think I may have the outline.

Start by mistreating minorities until they riot. Declare martial law. Profit.

I suspect there may be plans to limit global warming to the northern hemisphere. Use sulphurated fuels in the southern hemisphere to block the sun and cause massive cooling, which will raise antarctic Ice and keep the sea levels down, while making Canada, Siberia and Greenland green and pleasant lands. All the acid rain falls in the south, nobody important suffers.

They won't even object to the evacuation of pure scientists. though they will probably make technologists leaving as difficult as they can.

[KlaxonCow]

I suspect there may be plans to limit global warming to the northern hemisphere. Use sulphurated fuels in the southern hemisphere to block the sun and cause massive cooling, which will raise antarctic Ice and keep the sea levels down, while making Canada, Siberia and Greenland green and pleasant lands. All the acid rain falls in the south, nobody important suffers.

They won't even object to the evacuation of pure scientists. though they will probably make technologists leaving as difficult as they can.

No, no. You misunderstand.

You have some scientific literacy, so you're doing the logical thing of thinking of a way to make this "plan" work.

But Trump's actual thinking is "I am a rich God King. I will pay for all the bad to go away and not affect me", as if this is actually possible. I mean, to the extent that you can pay your underlings to keep things away from you, sure. But you can't keep the laws of physics away from your door. Your door is made of the laws of physics. You are. This is an impossibility that he's requesting.

But he's a moron who's been rich all his existence. So he doesn't comprehend. With everything else, he's just paid for it to go away. There is no comprehension that you can't pay for the weather to go away.

As has been observed by others, Elon and Bezos are building spaceships, so they can go and live on another planet. They've given up on this planet, because it requires them to be less rich and more responsible to save it. So, in that calculus, fuck the planet, let the subhumans slowly die on it. I'm just buying myself a new one.

Again, you have some scientific literacy. You recognise that this is a ridiculous line of thought. You can't buy a new planet. You can't just "move to Mars", as if this is without immense problems and requires so much more science and technology that we've not enacted yet. And comes with drawbacks, because Mars is NOT Earth 2.0 - less gravity, less sunlight. It's not a one-for-one replacement, even if you terraformed it. In fact, it cannot hold onto an atmosphere without a magnetic field and I don't know that anyone knows how you could ever solve that one.

But these people live in an existence where they throw money at things and, magically, it just happens. They think money is a magic spell that can do anything, because that's how it's behaved for them thus far in most things. Why can't I just buy a new planet or kill off all the poor? "I'm sorry, but I don't understand this 'no, that's not possible' words that you're speaking, as no-one's ever said those words to me before."

This is how folks with some scientific literacy realistically understand the situation:



But Elon wants to go to Mars as a "backup plan" for the human race.

Remember, the same Elon who was doing Nazi salutes and wants to fund the neo-Nazis in Germany. So if you're wondering who is going to be allowed on Elon's spaceship, there won't be any black people or Jews or gays, and the white women are only coming along because "baby factories" will be required, so we'd prefer them not to speak or have any ideas.