For a bit of a lark, here's what Elon Musk's AI system Grok came up with when asked: "If a president of a superpower wanted to destroy his own country, what steps would he take?" ...
... versus Chat GPT's answer to the same question:
Also, in other news, California appears like it'll try to negotiate separate trade deals. I suppose if the federal government in the States can ignore the Constitution, then the states can too. Not good for American unity.
California to negotiate trade with other countries to bypass Trump tariffs
Gov. Gavin Newsom said California will look for new trade opportunities.www.newsweek.com
calgaryherald.com
Neither are good precedents.So, Newsom is the "Danielle Smith" of American provincial governing?
Braid: Smith's tariff victory cry alarms Conservatives as Ontario car sector gets pounded
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith declares a big tariff win while Ontario takes a massive hit. Federal Conservatives are not pleased with her.
globalnews.ca
Don’t forget he’s bankrupted multiple businesses including an Atlantic City Casino. Trump is an extremely shady real estate developer; he’s not in any way shape or form a talented economist. He’s surrounded himself with ideological sycophants, and purges informed disagreement as disloyalty. This time round he’s kicked most of the adults out of the room, so yeah… We’re seeing what a powerful and erratic man influenced by ideologues who utterly lack expertise can lead to.
Not needed… Congresss just needs to grow a spine and stand up for the division of powers.
Trump has unified the Republicans like never before. Basically anyone who wasn’t MAGA or pretending to go along with MAGA couldn’t get a seat as the MAGA constituents form too much of a voting block within the Republicans to let anyone else win.Are these the same folk who used to complain about “sheepeople” now content to passively watch as their nation’s democracy, economy, and hegemony are systematically eroded & dismantled?
Most Republicans won’t use U.S. Congress’ power to stop Trump’s tariffs - National | Globalnews.ca
A handful of Republicans say they support limiting the president's ability to impose tariffs, but the idea of defying Trump seemed to squelch potential for quick action.
To normal, decently intelligent people it sounds like an export opportunity...
www.rollingstone.com
I wonder how many people are old enough to understand the irony. The old establishment lost its place in part because Republican voters were angry that the old establishment could never find enough backbone to push back Democrats as hard as those voters wanted.
Amateur hour. Like believing that all you have to do is throw out a dictator and democratic institutions will take root? It's not difficult to pin massive incompetence and hubris (the word of the day, it seems) on all of them if you know where to look.
The 2009 and onwards Tea Party movement was sort of a foreshock of Trumpism, and it’s not too hard to see how the former influenced and partly evolved into the latter. Ironically, it was born in large part out of a financial crisis, so there’s a full circle coming. Both are born out of larger, richer interests funding populist appeals, and a big part of Trumpism’s success has been in finally finding someone dumb enough to do what a lot of people are dumb enough to demand. However Trump may be a bit more rogue than would necessarily have been preferred; he’s sort of taken on a life of his own and is leveraging his considerable power to surround himself with sycophants. I struggle to imagine that the behind the scenes Republic power brokers genuinely want the economic chaos we’ve seen happen.
The longer American's wait, the harder it will be to revert back to democratic norms. There are already generational scars on the nation.
My reference was to the "non-amateurs" who thought they could bulldoze Saddam Hussein and replace him with some kind of pathway to moderate democracy; some of those people are still writing opinions and I suspect many readers don't know what those people did and what they stand for. The effects of that are still unwinding, resulting in massive very real (as in: not on paper) losses, and won't correct as quickly as a stock market index. The point is that many people are either very selective in their criticisms (based mostly, I suppose, on plain old emotional partisanship), or simply forget any particular thing about three months after it happens, or have no sense of proportion.
