Reminder that Google enthusiastically reached out to the IDF immediately after October 7th in hopes of selling them all sorts of AI tools; tools presumably used to kill thousands of Gazans.

Comrade this feels weird, I am not trying to call you out but respectfully I feel your estimates of the popularity of deporting undocumented workers is too high. This is a recent poll shows the base question of “deporting all undocumented persons”, while it has a plurality, is only at 43%. I like that AP poll because it asks a number of questions that show Americans are all over the map on this issue. Like, Americans seems to distinguish quite a bit between deporting recent and not recent migrants. Strongly against separating families. Yeah Americans are very very in favor of deporting “violent criminals” but put yourself in the shoes of a typical American trying to answer that question when asked.

I only push back on this because I believe strongly that there is a tremendous opportunity for the left in the US to seize on the opportunity and do the right thing: boldly take a stand for undocumented workers and push for their rights, and I think it will be more popular than most realize.

People don’t want to hear this but an iPhone, with the right settings, is the most secure phone outside of a pixel running GrapheneOS. This is something that Daniel Micay himself would say often.

Yes, the US will lose the next war. But imagine living through the last few years and thinking the problem isn’t in productive capabilities but rather that we need to put even more money into wunderwaffen that won’t actually work.

OK so he’s pawning off the ethnic cleansing back onto the Israelis. And the Israelis don’t have the ability nor the willingness to do so. I think we’re just back to square one, i.e. this is Trump trying to save face but I think ultimately he’s backing down.

Sorry, I should specified, Laussen explicitly says the contradiction is between neoliberalism and nationalism in the imperial core. He actually calls it something else, I don’t remember what exactly, “nationalism” was my own editorializing. But he talks about Trump, Boris Johnson, Meloni, the AfD, Brexit, etc.

I think either that poll is an outlier, or Americans have gotten significantly more transphobic in a very short amount of time. A majority of Americans have always opposed athletes participating in the sport of the gender they identify with, but this poll - admittedly from 2021 - shows it at 62% and I think is more in line with other polls. There’s also the issue that even if a majority are against it, it also is true that the American public doesn’t seem to like making it a political issue, and I think it cost the GOP in 2022 when they ran hard on transphobia. Like, your median American may not like the idea trans women in women’s sports, but it’s also something they probably haven’t thought about for more than 2 minutes of their lives; and when they see a politician basing a campaign around it they (rightly) think it to be weird.

I am starting to wonder if the last 24 hours is actually good for Palestinian liberation. Trump’s proposal for Gaza has been viewed in such negative terms by EVERYONE across the globe, since I don’t think he will be able to implement it, I think it only further isolates Israel and makes them even more of a pariah.

I think in regards to Canada, Panama, etc… it’s really just Trump saying these kinds of things. It doesn’t seem like global capital is on board. I think Greenland is its’ own thing. I think that’s just straight old imperialism like Lenin wrote about. It was the case that there wasn’t any more land to try and colonize, but climate change has changed things. I expect we’ll see a big land grab in Antarctica in the next decade.

Torkil Laussen says the principal contradiction in global capitalism right now is neoliberalism versus nationalism. When I heard this I was skeptical (because it feels like it should be the imperialist / anti-imperialist contradiction) but I’m starting to come around. Neoliberalism was a useful tool to prop up the rate of profit for the last few decades, but neoliberalism has pretty much used up its’ usefulness in fighting off TRPF. The TPRF is like a chronic illness - and neoliberalism was a drug that was useful in fighting off the illness for a while. But like any drug, its’ effectiveness wears off over time.

So neoliberalism can’t deliver the goods anymore, but global capitalism doesn’t have any answers at the moment. I think you have different factions of capital trying different things. I think the faction that wants to fall back on your good ol’ “blood and soil” ideology I think are just trying to address the TRPF with a Hulk Smash - squeeze profit the old fashioned way by oppressing domestic workers and exploiting the resources and labor of the weaker nations directly.

Right, that’s kind of my point. Trump will say something completely unhinged like this, the Democrats will talk about something similar but not as crazy in the shadows, and at the end of the day the situation for Palestine is the same.

I mean, it’s kinda cope. I don’t think Harris would ever thought of a plan this evil just with nicer language.

But our argument was never about who would say worse things about Gaza - Trump was always gonna be worse there. The point is that Trump says stuff but actual implementation isn’t there. I didn’t vote for Harris because I knew that, for good or ill, the situation for the Palestinian people would be no different on Jan 20, 2029 under Harris or Trump. And I feel just as confident in that now as I was in November.

The Saudis already pouring cold water on this plan.

I don’t doubt Trump wants to do this, he’s had Bibi whispering in his ear all day about it. Just like how he wants to take over Greenland, the Panama Canal, and fucking Canada. But operationally this plan is DOA. The Saudis aren’t on board, Sisi knows he will get coiled by the military if not murdered by his own people if he goes along. And I think most actually knowledgeable people in the deep state know how bad it’s gonna look when Qassam starts releasing videos of US soldiers getting got.

Trump wants a lot of things, but there is no way this happens. Honestly IMO I think even Bibi knows this and he’s only hyping this up to Trump to try and torpedo the ceasefire deal.

I agree it will never happen, but I have fantasized a bit tonight about how people I know IRL would react to me being absolutely delighted at the site of dead American troops.

“Hey check out this video of some dumbass troop from East Bumfuck getting a yassin 105 right in his ear! LMAO”

This was my first thought as well. Iran has no reason to assassinate him, none. But now that he’s saying this, the one country that desperately wants the US to attack Iran has every reason to assassinate him and frame the Iranians.

They really are shitboxes, how they get the “premium” aura I have no idea.

I gotta be honest, I thought DOGE was only ever gonna be some little toy for Musk to play with that had no real power. Didn’t think it would just take over an actual department and start doing real damage, I was really wrong on that one.

The benefit to Trump would be that this fund would presumably be under the control of the executive, so he’d be getting a slush fund worth potentially trillions. He’s currently limited in that Congress unambiguously controls the purse strings. Use your own imagination as to the possibilities for corruption or ideological warfare.

For ghouls like Bessent and the capitalists, it seems they are thinking of taking the federal government’s real assets that are not currently on their balance sheet (think Yosemite National Park) and financializing them. Maybe selling them (which probably requires congressional involvement now but if it’s instead in this fund maybe Trump actually could sell it with the stroke of a pen), maybe just moving things like income from drilling rights out of the Treasury and over to this fund.

The doomsday scenario - which I am not saying plausible, but just taking this to a logical extreme - is that the executive branch ends up with a huge pile of assets generating income or can borrowed against, that would allow a president to do whatever they want, basically forming its own government within a government, so to speak.

This makes me think Musk actually is in charge here. The dude is desperate to get more Teslas into China. If he’s pulling the strings you actually might see a bunch of policies favorable to China.

The contradiction at the heart of the Democratic Party is that they have a donor base that wants them to just be the GOP, but more respectable and less religious fundamentalist; while the voter base wants them to actually do things like M4A, work to mitigate climate change, etc. They don’t have a “strategy” anymore because Kamala’s loss showed that the base really is starting to give up on them for not doing anything. But if the DNC were to actually pursue their votes by instead of throwing all your effort into parading Liz Cheney around to try and get conservative, white, suburban votes, then you alienate your donors.

I think they’re just counting on a major recession happening in the next four years (highly likely IMO) and riding that, and never trying to resolve that contradiction.

That’s what Trump thinks, not what reality is.