Trump is infuriating. Not only is he dishonest, crude, criminal, stupid and inarticulate – he’s unforgivably ignorant.
Trump is infuriating. Not only is he dishonest, crude, criminal, stupid and inarticulate – he’s unforgivably ignorant.
Here’s a general rule: when the US government claims to be concerned that some other government will do X it is because the US has been doing X for some time, and considers X to be its sole prerogative. There’s seldom any attempt to justify its prerogrative as appropriate, merely a bunch of stuff about how bad it is for anyone else to do what we do.
The US government, and others, have plotted to bypass protections regarding search and surveillance, by finely parsing the words of the 4th amendment and weaseling around them – but, mostly, by just ignoring it. Privacy is for the rich and powerful, not for hoi polloi.
I’ve been puzzled by the fact that nobody seems to be talking about where these “federal troops” have come from.
We are presented with a conundrum:
That’s right: “Swamp Gas.”
The paramilitaries in Portland enjoy freedom of maneuver as well as local fire superiority. In that circumstance, they have “won” because they are able to leverage their superior force wherever and however they want it.
The president of the United States is arguing with interviewers about how well he did on a test to measure cognitive impairment in Alzheimers’ patients. Really.
You see them wherever you drive in Pennsylvania: small oil collection pumps, or wellheads for natural gas. The big fracking sites are away from the roads so they are unseen, but you can’t miss the trucks driving around with fracking liquid.
In case you hadn’t figured it out, the kerfuffle about Iran’s nuclear program really has nothing to do with them being a threat to the US – it’s all an attempt to maintain Israel’s status as sole nuclear power in the Middle East. If Israel is not able to engage in nuclear blackmail, they’d have to negotiate with their neighbors, which is a problem, since some of the neighbors don’t acknowledge Israel’s existence.