Don’t you think you should?
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Here is an AI response also had Chat GBT respond. I ask for the cause of the problem and potential fixes.
https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_e0badf7a-b5a4-4448-9951-ac6602003d96
Speaking as a Canadian, please be assured that there is no overstating the pervasive sense of betrayal at the USA. This is accounts for the unprecedented and abrupt shift in polls for the current federal election, with response to the hostile stance by the president now the one and only campaign issue.
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Isn’t it curious how nowhere in that answer does the AI say that US debt and trade imbalance is because other countries are trying to swindle/rob/take advatage of/freeload on the US?
Ironically the US defense industry has been doing well with exports historically, and Europe has been a major buyer of american military hardware, but now everyone over here are saying we need to end the reliance on the US and produce our own weapons instead of buying american.
That’s what your president has achieved with his handling of the Ukraine war. Everyone now thinks of the US as an unreliable partner that will pull the plug on equipment on whatever the whims of the current administration is, if we are attacked.
Bill I can’t begin to tell you how your country’s reputation has been utterly destroyed over here. Three months ago I could find one person in my family to have an argument with about whether Trump was truly as bad as many made him out to be. This person no longer thinks it’s just media exaggeration and bias.
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I run a small manufacturing firm. We import goods from a few countries, and we export our goods all over the world. Canada, not surprisingly, is our largest export market, but we also move a lot of goods into the UK and the EU.
As a domestic employer of manufacturing workers, I can tell you that the advent of a trade war is absolutely the worst possible thing to happen to companies like ours. This would destroy quite a lot of American companies’ ability to do export business, even if the only factor were the tariffs (which increase our cost of materials, result in retaliatory tariffs which make our goods uncompetitive in other countries, and depress spending power on the part of domestic consumers of our goods, all at the same time). But the tariffs are only the beginning.
The hostility of the United States to its allies, and the constant intentional offense caused to other nations, is burning up our goodwill with export customers. Canadians have been letting us know that, while they know we’re not responsible for it, they will be buying nothing from us for the foreseeable future. Every time the orange shitgibbon suggests that Canada is or should be the 51st state, Canadians are more deeply offended – and more worried that this incoherent, unstable friend of Putin is likely to do something quite insane. The other day the press secretary said in response to remarks of a French politician that the French should remember that they’d all be speaking German if it weren’t for us. Otto from A Fish Called Wanda is our press secretary.
Now, the French know not to make too much of a joke, even one as offensive as that, if it were only an isolated joke. But our increasing hostility toward the entire free world is causing France, together with the rest of Europe, to see that it is truly unable to rely on us in any sense. With Vlad looking to expand, that puts us all in danger of World War III.
As an export business working in a country with a horrifically unstable trade policy on which nobody can safely rely, which is pushing as hard as it can to piss off everyone in our largest export makets, we are looking at a calamity of epic proportions. Stagflation is the least of our worries as this country is humiliated in front of the entire world.
And so, again: to mistake these bizarre conditions for the ordinary back-and-forth of conventional domestic politics is a grave error. Nothing is normal about this, and nothing is safe or stable about it, either. The impact on our economy is likely to be devastating, and is the least of our worries.
Turn the clock back thirty years, and you’d have a hard time finding anyone in either party who would endorse the monstrous things that now happen daily. But the halfwitted thugs who invaded the Capitol on January 6 were, it is now clear, only the advance patrol of a large and dangerous wave of halfwittery that threatens to undo everything the United States has meant to the world.
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No. It would have been more consonant with the truth if you had said: We have a cabinet secretary who thinks some vaccines may be more dangerous than the diseases they counter
Wow thank you for this nuance, which is sure to convince all the people with anti-vaccination sentiment he has already inspired, to tone it down a notch and maybe let their children take one or two.
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So, should I feel consoled that the “good news” is that a very dangerous pronouncement by a cabinet secretary may undermine public health and lead to the death of many innocent children to a slightly lesser degree than we thought? Is that your point?
Specifically, I’d like to know which vaccines approved for routine and general distribution in the USA “may be more dangerous than the diseases they counter.”
Of course, the handy thing about the deniability of people like RFK Jr. using “weasel words” like “some” and “may” in this context is that he can upset people with his declarations (and put them in serious danger when they believe his rubbish) but can then deny any harm later. “After all, I used the words SOME and MAY.”
Ya know, SOME of the participants on this forum MAY be serial killers. I mean, you can’t say it is impossible that we have serial killers here. (After all, I only said there MAY be serial killers here.)
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Hi Rum
I do share some of your concerns especially how much the administration is trying to do at one time. The US with its massive debt and trade imbalance is in trouble so the status quo is not an answer. If the US stumbles badly so will the rest of the world.
This ship is going to sail for the next two years before the midterms. We will see how it shakes out.
That does not mean that there aren’t things worse than the status quo – for example losing the trust of your trading partners to such an extent that they abandon the US dollar as a reserve currency (which, to some extent, is already happening due to Trump).
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Thirty years ago we did not have a masked gestapo force arresting people off the street who are in the USA with appropriate legal papers and not charged with a crime. These agents are also often without uniforms or identifying themselves in any way other than simply stating, “We are the police.” Here’s an example:
This PhD student co-authored an op-ed in a university newspaper criticizing Israel for their treatment of Gazans.
No evidence of a crime mentioned. No criminal charges stated. No due process. Disagreeing with the White House is now very dangerous in this country. Both citizens and non-citizens now live in fear, especially if they are people of color. [Of course one could say that has been true for a long time for other reasons but that’s another topic for another time.]
I will continue to make comparisons to 1930’s Germany.
Meanwhile, last Sunday I heard a pastor open his sermon with praise for how wonderful DOGE is. And then he spun it into an acronym for his main sermon theme: “Do Only Good Everyday.”
I’m totally serious. The video of that sermon, under the simple title “DOGE”, is now on the church Facebook page.
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It’s interesting how kook magnetism works. The local creationists appear to be both Trumpers and anti-vaxers.
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I was a guest at the church last Sunday where I heard the DOGE sermon I described above—and the people there are for the most part Trumpers, anti-vaxers, anti-maskers, Young Earth Creationists who made a group trip to Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter, and generally consider anyone who doesn’t agree with them to be “a liberal” (and perhaps a heretic.) Many there tell me that they listen to American Family Radio throughout the day.
Yes. As @John_Harshman has observed, it all fits together.
POSTSCRIPT: Some there were very excited about the release of the Kennedy Assassination files. Some thought they would contain explosive revelations. I find that in these kinds of environments people are very much taken up by conspiracy theories. (The word GULLIBILITY comes to mind whenever I’m in these kinds of MAGA-conservative environments.)
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Meanwhile, Trump is a gold mine for late-night comedy monologues. The jokes virtually write themselves. I’m going to predict that this very obvious, only mildly humorous quip about J.D. Vance’s trip to Greenland will at least be discussed at comedy writer staff meetings, even if it doesn’t make it to air:
VANCE: “Mr. President, as you know, Greenland is Danish territory.”
TRUMP: “Yes, that alone makes your trip a great idea. Bring me back a couple dozen.”
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They don’t sound very Christian to me.
Incidentally it does appear that the JFK files contain some new information. Just none relevant to the assassination. And some things - like personally identifying information for CIA agents - that probably should not have been released, even now.
A report here: The Latest JFK Documents Release: A Quick Guide to the Perplexed - CounterPunch.org
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And Social Security numbers of witnesses et al were released. The government will be providing free credit monitoring for those affected and will have to issue new Social Security numbers. So incompetent.
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An even more insidious form of weaseling from this dangerous kook:
This weekend, Kennedy tackled the (measles) outbreak in a FOX News editorial, offering a lukewarm endorsement of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, which in the past he has falsely blamed for childhood autism.3
“Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons,” Kennedy wrote. He noted accurately that before the vaccine’s introduction, almost all children caught the disease, which kills about two people per 1000 cases in the US.
But Kennedy did not urge the public to take the vaccine, in contrast to messages from previous health secretaries. “The decision to vaccinate is a personal one,” he wrote, urging parents to “consult with their healthcare providers to understand their options to get the MMR vaccine.”
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This is where your country is right now:
I hope you will be understanding if and when people refuse to take your blithely oblivious “wait and see” approach and start taking matters into their own hands, whatever form that might take.
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And probably a communist.
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A chilling video. The news story would have been outrageous on its own but the fact that Americans saw it this morning on their breakfast TV news programs made it far more impactful. (A picture is worth a thousand words. A video is worth a million words.)
We can be thankful for surveillance cameras.
Will she next be sent to an El Salvador prison?
Remember when MAGA radio talk show hosts were saying that Biden was setting up hundreds of “concentration camps” for conservative Christians? Now where will Trump put those one million deportees he has promised? (They can’t all be express shipped to El Salvador.)
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