Normally running a large deficit acts as a stimulus for the economy, but Trump’s reverse Midas touch is just too strong.

I suspect that it’s a reaction to the various successful media projects by Michelle Obama. In Trump’s mind, the Obamas are making him look bad by being smart/successful/…, so this is Trump’s attempt at showing that his first lady too can create a successful media project. Because the Trumps are tasteless and have surrounded themselves with sycophants, there wasn’t anyone around to tell them how crap the movie was, so it got released as it is.

The big tell that this was Trump’s attempt at trying to one up the Obamas, is that once it became obvious that the Melania movie was bombing, Trump posted a super racist video about the Obamas. He tried to one up the Obamas creatively, failed, and then resorted to insults.

Meanwhile Melania is 28 million dollar richer, so as usual she probably doesn’t care that much about how bad this makes her look.

As I understand it, the public perception of Trump was distorted by how he was portrayed on The Apprentice: https://www.psypost.org/new-research-sheds-light-on-the-influence-of-the-apprentice-on-donald-trumps-political-rise/

The producers at NBC had to jump through a lot of hoops to make Trump appear competent. Their chief marketing officer from that time is very sorry for what he did: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2024-10-16/we-created-a-tv-illusion-for-the-apprentice-but-the-real-trump-threatens-america

Once Trump became the republican candidate, the right-wing media took up the responsibility of filtering and distorting what their audience got to see and hear about Trump.

Republicans really have something against the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, it seems to get targeted at every opportunity.

Edit: as it turns out, republicans really do have a grudge against the agency, they’ve been targeting it since before Trump got reelected: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/22/conservatives-cyber-cisa-politics-00122794 Countering misinformation campaigns was a bridge too far for republicans.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_Kilmar_Abrego_Garcia

Tldr:
Fled from gang violence in San Salvador as a teenager, married to an American, has american kids, was living and working legally in the USA, was still illegally deported to a prison in San Salvador, had to be brought back under court order, is then falsely accused of crimes in Tennessee and now they want to deport him to a country that he has no connection to whatsoever.

Ironically, to get the Tennessee accusations, the usa government struck cooperation deals with convicted criminals, one of which was going to be deported after his sentence, but now not anymore.

The cost for the USA government to persecute this 1 single person has to be already in the millions by now.

Your omissions and alterations are interesting.

The article doesn’t just mention “a wreck”, it says “In September 2022, Tyler flipped his father’s SUV while driving, leaving his passenger with multiple concussions and sever lacerations, according to reports.” If Tyler was driving recklessly (and he was), then the passenger was the victim and the driver the perpetrator. If you’re interested in hearing the story of the passenger: https://www.rawstory.com/lauren-boebert-car-crash/ The tldr: “If I did what he did, I’d still be in jail.”

The “theft ring involving drug use” doesn’t mention drugs in the article. And it being theft, means that there were victims of theft. Including apparently a broke woman with a brain tumor.

And also in the case of child abuse there was a victim (the child in case it isn’t obvious).

I don’t get how you can’t recognize the victims in these stories.

In your example the daughter has committed no crimes and made no victims, and she could even be considered a victim herself. Tyler Boubert has already made many victims and will continue to make new victims because his mother’s political clout is protecting him.

The morally right thing to do, would be to protect the victim(s) and bring the perpetrator(s) to justice. In the example of the daughter, the daughter is a victim and she and her family should get the time and space needed to heal. In Tyler Boebert’s cases, Tyler was never the victim, but always a/the perpetrator, with his mother enabling him. With the Boebert family, the morally right thing to do, is to decrease the odds of Tyler making new victims, which gives journalists a moral imperative to consider every new crime of Tyler, to be news worthy.

If an adult family member of a significant political figure commits a crime, then there’s 2 big reasons why that case deserves extra scrutiny: 1) to check whether or not the family member is treated in a fair manner by the persecution and justice system (which could go both ways, they could escape justice because of their family connections, but they could also be extra persecuted for political reasons). 2) To keep track of whether or not the political figure their integrity remains intact.

If Tyler Boebert’s mother wasn’t a prominent republican politician, would he have escaped a prison sentence for his litany of crimes? Personally, I doubt it. And because he keeps escaping consequences, he keeps doing stupid things.

The carbon comes from another source and sticks to the metal, you’ve probably already seen examples irl. If you burn something in a steel pan on the stove, then there will be black residue (char) left sticking on the pan. A burnt electrical outlet is another case, there the carbon comes from the plastic.

Lead in water makes the water taste sweet. My guess is that they charred lead dust to make it look grey/black and then used it as artificial sweetener.

Denmark can pay the USA in ozempic pills.

I live in a country where every citizen automatically receives a government id at the age of 12. We have to bring that id when we go to vote, but even if I were to lose the card at the worst possible time, there are contingency measures to allow me to still cast my vote. The idea is to get as many people as possible to vote, the id card greatly facilitates this process, but it’s not used as a tool to keep people from voting.

In the usa (and the uk, and maybe other countries as well), citizens are not automatically granted an id card. Instead they have to acquire + maintain some accepted means of identifying themselves if they want to vote. And there some Americans saw a great opportunity: what if they made it so that certain minority groups would have a statistically harder time acquiring and maintaining identification that was deemed acceptable? And what if the state government could arbitrarily purge voter lists based on data mined information? The voter id requirements are used not only for facilitating the voting process, but also for suppressing undesired votes.

If you want some examples of usa voter suppression: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_United_States

When Trump dies, someone else will take over his role, and that other person is bound to be a lot smarter than Trump (it’s a very low bar). At this point, it seems to me like the only thing that might stop the usa’s descent into fascism, is Trump completely destroying the economy in record pace because of his unfathomable stupidity. If the usa opposition can’t defeat fascism with Trump in charge of the fascists, then they have no chance with someone like Vance in charge.

The allies had the same dilemma with Hitler in WW2. They had a solid plan to assassinate Hitler and they really wanted to, but Hitler’s meddling incompetence was helping them win the war.

Additionally, British officials believed that Hitler’s incompetence and flawed military tactics were, in fact, advantageous to the Allied cause. They argued that by leaving Hitler in power, the Allied forces could continue to leverage his bungling strategy against the Germans. They believed that replacing Hitler with a competent successor could pose a greater challenge, as they might be more adept at waging war against the Allies. Source: https://ahistoryfactaday.org/the-controversial-decision-to-not-assassinate-hitler-in-1944-weighing-political-pragmatism-and-conventional-tactics/

So they basically want to bring back the company towns from the gilded age, but more dystopian thanks to the possibilities of modern technology. Characteristics of company towns often were: “controlling and/or exploitative”.

Control: If your employer does something unethical, will you dare go against it, if it means that not only will you lose your job, but you and your family will be also be kicked out of your house, school, town, … Very few would.

Exploitative: where can the company town residents shop and find services? In the company shops of course. This constrained supply also leads to subpar service for high prices. And if company sales are down, the company will spend less on wages, but keep the company shop prices the same since the shoppers have no alternative anyhow.

Add in modern technology, and some of those towns will be like Brave New World, while others will evolve into 1984. Dystopian.

According to the headline it’s 20% of those who voted for the mayor, not 20% of the population. So fe a drop from 60% to 48% voter participation.

If a system encourages people to not vote when they have no clue who they are voting for, then that might be considered a feature instead of an issue. Though one problem I can think off is that coaching of voters on how to vote becomes even more effective. I’m on the fence on this one.

Ps: is a 20% drop enough to say that something “cratered” or is this just another superlative clickbait title?

True, headlines matter.

Why “no”? You’re basically saying the same as the summary.

I’ve stopped giving USA republicans the benefit of doubt years ago, Trump’s first year in office was enough to convince me. I’ve accepted that they are comically evil and that they have no redeeming qualities. So if I see something that is comically evil, then I’m not going to invent possibilities of why it might not be as bad, because in my experience it will turn out that after a little digging, it’s actually worse.

Also the administration was given the opportunity to justify or explain their actions by the reporter, and they chose not to, most likely not because they didn’t want to, but because they couldn’t do so in a matter that did not make them appear like spiteful bigots. There’s no point in inventing possible defenses for them if they could not provide them themselves.

They have already created gender neutral restrooms, according to the article these windows are not in those.

There’s 2 stalls visible in the picture. The walls are not floor to ceiling, the doors have larger gaps above and though it isn’t visible, I expect also a gap below. It’s not clear if there are vertical visibility slits on the sides of the doors. But they’re clearly just stalls really.

But it doesn’t really matter how the stalls are, the way that we know that this is targeted spite and bullying, is that windows are being cut only in a specific subset of the restrooms. They’re trying to shame and intimidate the kids that are in those restrooms.