there are no deals, commitments are meaningless, but the ironclad principle of the new diplomacy is if you flatter him and make him look good he just might be nice to you. whoever you are. and if you give him an opportunity to look good, if he can take credit, he might do whatever you’d like done.
Many of the worst crimes are perpetrated —by purposeful arrangement—in third countries. Auschwitz wasn’t in Germany. “Extraordinary renditions” weren’t to the United States. A green light into black holes. www.stevevladeck.com/p/161-the-co... ht @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com @jamellebouie.net
161. The Court's Disastrous Ruling in the Third-Country Removal Case
Link Preview: 161. The Court's Disastrous Ruling in the Third-Country Removal Case: The majority did not just greenlight an especially odious immigration policy without any explanation; it did so in a case in which the government defied the district court—twice—with no consequence.
no pain no gain
checking is for libs. you can just do things.
what if Bidenomics (running the job market hot, "wage compression" — higher real wage increases in percentage terms, despite inflation, at the lower end — was wot murdered murder, and electing a "tough on crime" president will be the thing that undoes that?
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(i hate it when i forget to balance my parentheses but too many engagements to erase and redo
whenever i hear the expression "drill baby drill", i think of the dentist.
you scared me for a second there. i favor the oscar just for the relief i am now experiencing. let him have the nobel peace oscar.
i have one, and worry very much about that, however far-fetched some may take it to be.
well if brutally put.
remember when we used to worry about "loose nukes"?
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America is admired for its openness and calm self-assurance.
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i see mockery of fears that selective service registration could cease to be a mere formality and conscription could return. i agree that it’s far-fetched. but it’s a bit less far-fetched after the Russia-Ukraine experience, who expected the return of manpower-intensive trench warfare. and yet.
so many regimes to change.
what if we traded, regime change here for regime change there? seems fair!
whose birthday was April 20 again, Elon? even if it was just a marijuana thing, you’ve been confronted with this by now. the kindest interpretation is you’ve taken a puerile stand against having to take this information into account. the worst is it’s why you chose it in the first place.
coalition of the who the fuck even knows anymore
mb kind of a moral version of a Veblen good. it’s hard to know what will actually deliver power, but ambitious people do/promote evil as a price of power sometimes they use this price in evil as a proxy for or measure of how effective an approach must be at delivering power. and so look to pay more
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“Put simply, the destination envisaged for the US is Russia 2. This move is thus a repudiation of the history of the US, including the distinctive features that made it successful. The transformation it aims at is truly revolutionary but its destiny is decline not greatness.”
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i left my pom-poms at home.
the end of history was boring, but history is worse than boring.