The All Things Political Topic - SNAFU edition

[LadyCrimson]

Portland, those Hegseth/Trump speeches, the US gov. shutdown, Trump being a mentally doddering bully wanna-be despot (seriously, his Twitter posts are childish bully rants).

Hey America, are we great again, yet?
 

 

[Gorgon]

 

[rjshae]

I have to wonder about the types of conversations American parents are having with their kids about being recruited into the military forces at the moment. This delusional president wants the armed forces to wage war on mostly unarmed American civilians. I mean that is the very definition of terrorism. What a (figuratively) crazy situation.

[Malcador]

 

[HoonDing]

Chief Wiggum runs faster than that

[Hurlshort]

6 hours ago, rjshae said:

I have to wonder about the types of conversations American parents are having with their kids about being recruited into the military forces at the moment. This delusional president wants the armed forces to wage war on mostly unarmed American civilians. I mean that is the very definition of terrorism. What a (figuratively) crazy situation.

I did a teacher training with the Marines a couple years ago. It was surprisingly progressive, and the explanation was we need to constantly recruit teenagers, and we can't afford to turn off young people. That doesn't mean it is easy or the bar is low. Far from it, they were really pushing for the kids that want to further their education, because the military will pay for it. 

Anyways, I haven't seen recruitment numbers recently, but I would think they are going to take a hit. I'm sure they'll just bring back he draft to compensate. That will be popular.

[rjshae]

8 hours ago, Malcador said:

 

Napoleonic column tactics? Well I suppose they can lower the crime rate in a one block radius.

[rjshae]

I see the government has found a new use for a belt sander:

Treasury Department considers minting a $1 Trump coin

[uuuhhii]

new ss of usa are now playing with pepper spray for fun

give it 3 month until they do weekly mass shooting

Edited Sunday at 06:52 PM by uuuhhii

[BruceVC]

14 hours ago, uuuhhii said:

new ss of usa are now playing with pepper spray for fun

give it 3 month until they do weekly mass shooting

You clearly dont live in a country where violent protests are common

Pepper spray, teargas, water cannons and rubber bullets are regularly used in many countries that grapple with these types of social unrest 

We use them in South Africa and we dont consider these methods examples of Nazi suppression 

But the US is a  long way off from live ammunition becoming the norm for crowd control in protests 

 

[uuuhhii]

france lost another pm

the incompetence are amazing

 

[rjshae]

Economic related news:

Without data centers, GDP growth was 0.1% in the first half of 2025, Harvard economist says

Yes, you are feeling it: 22 states are officially in a recession — is yours on the list?

It’s not just Sam Altman warning about an AI bubble. Now Mark Zuckerberg says a ‘collapse’ is ‘definitely a possibility’

I get the sense that the only reason the economy isn't fully in the tank is the billions being spend on technology and data centers. That investment is heading for bubble perhaps greater than the dot com era. Once that goes, we may be in deep doo-doo. When that happens, whomever is President at the time will be dealing with a mess.

Interesting times.

[Lexx]

Maybe it's conspiracy brain, but if the big guys are talking about it like that suddenly, I have a feeling something else is going on.

[HoonDing]

Imagine if Greta gets the Nobel Peace Prize.

 

[BruceVC]

7 hours ago, rjshae said:

Economic related news:

Without data centers, GDP growth was 0.1% in the first half of 2025, Harvard economist says

Yes, you are feeling it: 22 states are officially in a recession — is yours on the list?

It’s not just Sam Altman warning about an AI bubble. Now Mark Zuckerberg says a ‘collapse’ is ‘definitely a possibility’

I get the sense that the only reason the economy isn't fully in the tank is the billions being spend on technology and data centers. That investment is heading for bubble perhaps greater than the dot com era. Once that goes, we may be in deep doo-doo. When that happens, whomever is President at the time will be dealing with a mess.

Interesting times.

A technical recessions is just 2 quarters of negative GDP  growth and one sector underperforming can create it 

Obviously its never good news but it also gets exaggerated around what it means because you need to look at other overall economic metrics to understand economic health 

We have had several  technical recessions in South Africa and it was almost entirely because of mining and agriculture but all other sectors had growth 

And then the next quarter one of the underperforming sectors sees growth and suddenly you not in recession anymore 

 But I see the US defines recession slightly differently in the links based on the NBER definition 

" The National Bureau of Economic Research defines a recession as a significant, broad-based decline in economic activity lasting more than a few months, as per the report. It looks closely at employment, personal income, consumer spending, and industrial production, as per the MarketWatch report."