Congress is too beholden and scared of Trump on the GOP side to do anything meaningful. The democrats are generally spineless.
The federalist society and GOP have created a severe ideological imbalance on the supreme court that will have serious ramifications for years to come unless there's a serious effort to pack or reform the institution.
That way they could vote in Republican primaries. Many if not most of those districts actually have Republican candidates in the primaries who are center right but they lose because primary turnout is very low, largely consisting of just the most extreme voters.
For example consider Marjorie Taylor Green (MTG). In the primary the first time she ran against a perfectly normal Republican. I don't remember all the details, but I believe he was a decorated military officer who after the military was a successful businessman and who had server in state offices.
MTG was a full on QAnon and other conspiracy theorist believer. But it is mostly the fringe that votes in primaries so she won. And it is a heavily Republican district with many people who don't really follow politics so she got their vote in the general election because they always vote R.
Register as a Republican if you are in such a district and vote in the primaries and then maybe we can get back to having sane Republicans winning those districts.
For safe Republican districts where they do elect sane Republicans, it is still worth switching registration. Let the current representative from that district know that you are doing this, and promise that if Trump gets upset at their vote on something and bankrolls a primary challenge, you will vote for them in the primary.
Also these voters are dumb but they aren't that dumb. Unless you know a person who actually has presented as a Trump supporting republican for the last decade and is secretly willing to switch sides after the election, you're not going to trick them.
If you look at J6 attempted self-coup where people were chanting death threats agaisnt the vice president and had a hangman's noose ready and pipe bombs were found and say "that was a peaceful protest", while also looking at the woman who was shot dead through the side window of her car while departing from a group of ICE officers and call that "self defence againsy attempted vehicular manslaughter", you may have a problem.
If your reaction to "Punish them socially" is to claim "That’s the most facist thing I’ve ever heard." of the person who essentially just said "stop talking to these people, stop inviting them to parties and stuff", when your fellow citizens are dying at the hands of federal officers who are being given defacto immunity, you may have a problem.
The current administration already punishes people for thinking differently with a lot worse than not inviting them to dinner; is the kind of regime that creates refugees and asylum seekers out of its own citizens, who flee from it.
Half the country is outraged that leftists think just because they don’t like immigration law, as it is written and voted for, that it’s okay to obstruct deportations and drive vehicles into innocent ICE officers doing their job.
If Oklahoma declared itself a sanctuary state from unions and declared it didn’t have to adhere labor law would you agree with their right to do so? If Salt Lake City decided to be a sanctuary for polygamy and underage marriage and started obstructing the FBI when they came in to arrest people would you be cheering?
There is no such thing as a sanctuary state or sanctuary city. Imagine the chaos if every city just ignored the laws they don’t like.
Calling each other facists and nazis is just lazy, inaccurate, and an excuse for elevating oneself over ones political opponents.
> Oh yeah the coup where no one brought firearms and the only person shot was a protester?
Multiple individuals connected to Jan 6 were found with guns and ammunition: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/capitol-riot-weapons-deadly-dan... and https://www.npr.org/2021/03/19/977879589/yes-capitol-rioters...
> The cop who shot Ashley Babbit was given “de facto immunity.”
Video from inside the Capitol building showed her attempting to climb through a broken window outside the House chamber when the officer, who was guarding the entrance from the rioters, fired.
> Half the country is outraged that leftists think just because they don’t like immigration law, as it is written and voted for, that it’s okay to obstruct deportations and drive vehicles into innocent ICE officers doing their job.
Read this carefully:
Side. Window.
She (Renne Good) did not, and could not, have been driving the car into the person who shot her through the side window.
Because, and I don't know if this is news to you, cars do not drive sideways.
> If Oklahoma declared itself a sanctuary state from unions and declared it didn’t have to adhere labor law would you agree with their right to do so? If Salt Lake City decided to be a sanctuary for polygamy and underage marriage and started obstructing the FBI when they came in to arrest people would you be cheering?
What about! What about! What about!
The current administration is violating your own constitution. The behaviour of ICE is unlawful within your own rules.
> Imagine the chaos if every city just ignored the laws they don’t like.
I don't need to imagine, it looks like Trump.
> Calling each other facists and nazis is just lazy, inaccurate, and an excuse for elevating oneself over ones political opponents.
There are bronze plaques on the ground in my city dedicated to the victims of fascism. I don't speak for others, but I tell you this myself: Trump has been following the same footsteps as those whose dishonour is memorialised by the names of their victims upon those plaques.
Your telling of events makes it sound like he walked up to the side of the car and shot her dead for no reason. This is wholly inconsistent with the camera footage and damage to the car.
Please stop trying to inflame with your partial account of events.
Ashley Babbit was shot for breaking a window in a federal building, which is far less of an offense than obstructing an officer and assault with a vehicle.
And Facism starts with civilians who act as enforcers and intimidators, not with the police. Hitler’s brown shirts and Mussolini's black shirts elevated the Facists to power. The SS came afterwords. Antifa is far closer to the brownshirts than any other organization in the US. Power through intimidation and chaos. Facist.
We have to remember that we aren't all working from the same perceptual or moral framework. This is a struggle for me, as I love my parents but our believes have diverged considerably.
I think the challenge right now in the U.S. is that for many, it doesn't feel socially safe to question your own side. In reality, we need to feel free to judge actions individually, and judge leaders as a true accumulation of their actions. If we fear rejection from our party/family/friends for not walking in lock-step with the official party stances, that influences a lot of our thinking. No one wants to feel continually guilty about their own views (especially when there are social consequences for changing them), so we often shove aside conflicting details, make jokes, and signal to others that we're still a part of the tribe.
It sucks.
A subtle signal that war with United States is a possibility.
Trump will use this as a pretext to not only take Greenland but to invade Canada as well.
He has gone utterly mad. Congress needs to act. Yesterday.
After a short time, and some casualties, I think the US military would have real problems internally, not counting that popular support would disappear.
Also if any french military asset is present when the US attack, we will see how determined the french military is following it's own doctrine (which dictates a 'warning shot' 24 hours before sending the tactical nukes).
My guess is as yours - the US military's focus on middle east and east Asia is of great disadvantage for them. Do they even get below -20 C for any longer periods at any base located on US mainland? Alaska, and some regions close to Canada, perhaps, leaving them with only some 10.000 personnel having anything near arctic experience, majority of which are based at the bases, not trained for front-action in artic climate.
For some real-life insides:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Msfrit12u0M&lc=UgwDlvf-UEzzhBzZJ...
The question is what would happen to the US staff land-locked on NATO bases within the EU. They will automatically become under siege, vastly outnumbered by European counterparts.
Since any attack on Greenland is an attack on the EU country the Kingdom of Denmark, and any attack on any EU countries automatically trigger EU Article 42.7, which mandates the full support from all members, to which all EU countries have committed, it would imply full-scale war.
If we build a Rammstein- sized base the US would already outnumber the native population.
Would the Danes or French open fire on us while the US is setting up shop? Highly unlikely.
Trump is pushing a total takeover but I suspect he would rather leave a small pocket of southern Greenland to the Danes to continue supporting the indigenous people, and then taking the bulk of the rest for mineral rights, arctic sea lanes, and defense.
Greenland is an island full of a vast nothingness, there is enough space for those kinds of bases. Greenland and Denmark have repeatedly said as much, and allowed the US to build any number of bases of any size. Building bases is totally possible, and always was possible, because Greenland and Denmark have always allowed it and would have continued to allow that.
I mean, they even turned a blind eye towards the US loosing a nuclear reactor and contaminating quite a bit of ice while trying to build tunnels for their ICBMs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Century
The EU applies a 10% tariff on U.S. cars, while the U.S. applies 2.5% on most EU cars
The EU underpaid NATO while passing the buck and funding extensive social programs
The EU enabled the Dutch Sandwich and Irish offshoring trade scams which has become a tax haven
What happened to Harley is the commonly shared example
U.S. MSRP: ~$28,000 (base model, pre-shipping).
After EU Tariff (at 50% peak proposal): Adds ~$14,000, bringing landed cost to ~$42,000.
Plus 25% VAT: Applied to post-tariff value, adding ~$10,500 → ~$52,500.
Plus 150% Luxury Tax (on value above threshold, but effectively inflating the whole): Adds ~$71,500 (based on full calculations accounting for the threshold and compounding).
Total Retail Price in Denmark: Up to $124,000 (more than 4x the U.S. price).
It's not EU's fault US manufacturers can't keep manufacturing costs down.
Neither is it EU's fault Trump believes slapping tariffs hurting US consumers will improve US standing in the world.
Your post is yet another example of how USians don't understand how VAT works.
There is no VAT rebate on exports, there is a 100% reimbursement of VAT on any export. There is also a 100% reimbursement of VAT on any B2B sale. That way VAT is a tax only on goods that are sold to consumers in the EU, no matter where they came from and no matter where they were manufactured/processed/...
How this works as an example: You mine iron ore, sell a ton for 1000€. Buyer pays 20% VAT. But since it's B2B, buyer can get those 20% back immediately in his monthly VAT declaration. Buyer makes 500kg steel from that iron ore, sells it for 2000€. Buyer of the steel can get those 20% back, since it's B2B. Let's say the buyer makes paperclips from that steel and sells those. Now the buyer of those paperclips is the interesting thing here, because the buyer pays 20% VAT on those paperclips. He might be their end-user (either business or customer) in which case he won't get 20% VAT back. He might be a reseller, in which case he will get the VAT back. End-users don't get their 20% VAT, resellers and processing industry do. It's always only the last step in the chain who really pay VAT, everyone else doesn't.
And any border-crossing is treated as a sale, so the you get the VAT rate (different EU contries have different rates) from the country that the goods are leaving paid out, and you have to pay the VAT rate of the country you are entering on those goods. If you are exporting to non-EU, and there is no VAT in the destination country, you don't pay any, you just get the VAT back from the country you are exporting from. So it is totally symmetrical, totally fair, and totally neutral, independent from whether it is US, EU, Chinese or whatever the origin might be.
And if you think it's complicated, you might be right. But then again, look at the complete and utter mess that US sales taxes are. Every other town might have a different tax rate, system, catalogue of goods every other week. USians shouldn't complain about trade barriers as long as that mess is still in place.
> The EU enabled the Dutch Sandwich and Irish offshoring trade scams which has become a tax haven
That's a fault of Ireland and the Netherlands, the EU is just powerless to stop those practices. Same as the US is powerless to get rid of their own tax haven states like Delaware, Nevada or Wyoming. Just to cite Wikipedia, "Andrew Penney from Rothschild & Co described the US as "effectively the biggest tax haven in the world" and Trident Trust Co., one of the world's biggest providers of offshore trusts, moved dozens of accounts out of Switzerland and Grand Cayman, and into Sioux Falls" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_as_a_tax_haven
I’d say that I prefer him to go about it a different way, except that I can’t see what that different way looks like when you want territory from another country that doesn’t want to give it to you.
And I say this as a European. Europe is not credible from a defense perspective and lacks the will to do very much of anything quickly or effectively. The best you can expect is a series of talking shops and some policy documents to be drawn up while the ice continues to melt.
United857•2h ago
wrxd•2h ago
rpiguy•2h ago