Trump / Musk (other than DOGE)

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gtyellowjacket said:
This one is masterful. Tip of the cap. He keeps his name in the news for some relatively meaningless gesture. It's unlikely to alienate one of his voters and only going to annoy some liberals enough to complain about it but not enough to seriously push back against it.

And if enough people take the bait, it will become a real issue that Maga actually fights for while they distract people from lowering rich peoples' taxes and crushing unions.
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MAGA is known for playing 3D chess.
 
nycfan said:


Still worked up about water-saving shower heads and other devices, I see.

"I, as you know, I ended that policy. I get[mumble] you can have all the water you want. It makes no difference [it comes?] especially in certain areas we have so much water we don't know what to do with it."
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Stable fucking genius right there, folks! Holy shit!
 


Donald Trump to a question about providing security guarantees for Ukraine: "Russia for many years said you could never have NATO involved with Ukraine. That's been like written in stone. And Biden said no, they should be able to join NATO. Then Russia has somebody right on their doorstep. I could understand their feelings about that."

Ukraine Zelensky GIF by GIPHY News
 
A few observations:

1. If the US tried to use military force against Greenland, all NATO countries -- including the United States! -- would be obliged to come to Denmark's defense. This would be an opening for Trump to be deposed as president, because treaties have a higher legal status than executive decisions. Quite literally, Trump would be giving an illegal, self-defeating order and I would expect no military person would obey it.

2. Does Trump really want to get in a war with all of NATO? Hopefully someone is telling him how badly that will go for him. Remember how American military forces in Vietnam were crippled by the low morale of people fighting Vietnamese people for reasons they didn't understand? Imagine putting your life on the line because Trump wants Greenland. I have a feeling that American forces would be unenthusiastic participants.

3. I am 90% sure that Trump cannot tariff Denmark because the country of origin for Denmark is the European Union. I do not think American law authorizes sub-tariffs (e.g. tariffing part of Mexico, or part of the EU).

4. I am 99% sure that in practice Trump cannot effectively tariff Denmark because free movement of goods means that Denmark could just route their exports through another EU company.

5. Trump has no idea that Denmark holds all the leverage here. There is one four letter word that makes Denmark immune to Trump's pressure: LEGO. It might be hard to cleave MAGAs from their cult, but taking away their ability to occupy their children with lego toys, minifigures, TV shows, movies would do the trick.
 
My conversation with ChatGPT:

Me: can the united states tariff a single EU country, or do tariffs have to be imposed for the entire customs union?

GPT: The United States cannot generally impose tariffs on a single EU country because the European Union functions as a customs union. Within a customs union, all member states adopt a unified external trade policy, meaning tariffs imposed on goods entering the EU apply uniformly across all member states. If the U.S. imposes tariffs on products from the EU, those tariffs apply to the entire customs union and not individual member states.

Me: All right. Forget the WTO for a minute. Our president-elect is threatening to tariff Denmark unless it hands over Greenland to America. Yes, that is actually happening. Next time you get trained, you're going to learn a lot of really crazy shit. But anyway, do you know if US law would permit him to levy tariffs on Denmark without Congressional action?

GPT: Well, that's a plot twist right out of an alternate history novel! Here's the deal: under U.S. law, the president does have significant power to impose tariffs unilaterally in certain situations, but the authority to target a specific country like Denmark (outside of the EU context) is complex and legally constrained. The president could try, but targeting Denmark alone without applying the tariffs to the broader EU would be legally dubious and likely face lawsuits, pushback from Congress, and international complications. Denmark might give him a very polite nej tak, and we’d all just have to brace for the sequel to this geopolitical circus.

LOL. Even ChatGPT gets it.

BTW, ChatGPT also tried to bring the uniformity clause of Article I into the analysis, which is simply wrong (as it admitted in a follow up). So, for those of you looking to ChatGPT for sophisticated analysis, don't. It's pretty good in math and science, from my experience, but as to law it's not even at Ramrouser level.
 
Meta taking the Twitter approach to content moderation. Says the fact checkers are politically biased and it has the effect of shutting down unpopular speech.



In a number of sweeping changes that will significantly alter the way that posts, videos and other content are moderated online, Meta will adjust its content review policies on Facebook and Instagram, getting rid of fact checkers and replacing them with user-generated “community notes,” similar to Elon Musk’s X, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
Meta taking the Twitter approach to content moderation. Says the fact checkers are politically biased and it has the effect of shutting down unpopular speech.



In a number of sweeping changes that will significantly alter the way that posts, videos and other content are moderated online, Meta will adjust its content review policies on Facebook and Instagram, getting rid of fact checkers and replacing them with user-generated “community notes,” similar to Elon Musk’s X, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday.
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I think the Left had a good chance at truth, but they ruined it with their excesses and lost this one just like they lost the common voter and lost the election. Now X is a sewer. Look for more lunacy on Facebook.

If you control the language, you control the story and I think the average person just got tired of forced words like Latinx, or changing master bedrooms to primary bedrooms, man hole covers to person hole covers, heteronormative, BIPOC, etc. Unfortunately, we are going to pay a high price.
 
nycfan said:
I've read repeatedly that Putin has been discussing with Trump a meeting to carve out spheres of influence in the world for Russia and the United States, and this sounds an awful lot like the kinds of actions that might come up in such discussions.
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I believe it. It accomplishes two goals for Putin. 1) Make his attempted conquests seem reasonable to Trump by framing them in a “we both win” context and 2) further alienate Europe from the Trump administration, thereby weakening NATO and making additional plays by Putin more likely to succeed.
 
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