u/Mirshe

He also stole a shitload of art from the ambassador's office in France in his first term. You'll also recall that he wants (dunno if he got) the Declaration of Independence moved into the office as well.

It already basically IS the next Versailles. Versailles was built as a huge, ostentatious show of wealth and power over the aristocracy, so Louis XIV could show that he held all the power. By making all these fancy nobles drag their asses out to the middle of nowhere (at the time - the city effectively grew up to support the palace) and stay there for weeks or months at a time, often without proper accommodations (quite literally you would set up camp in the gardens or wherever you thought you could get away with it - if you stayed in the palace proper, you were quite high in status), you flexed serious power over them, especially when they felt they NEEDED to attend all these balls and galas and symposiums and concerts that were constantly happening there so you could stay in the King's favor.

Any of this sounding familiar?

They don't need to invent law and Roberts et al know it. See, the thing about being on the Supreme Court is that aside from Congress impeaching you, there is no other recourse. Your entire decision could be written as "lol no" and unless Congress decides to impeach you, *there's nothing anyone can do about the decision*.

Israeli policy is to not report missile hits so they can claim Iron Dome works 1000% perfectly.

Also, we all forget he tried to gin up a war with Iran in his first term. Wartime presidents tend to stay in power, and he knows this - wartime protests would also give him an excuse to use the military at home like the blunt instrument he sees them as.

It's what's known as "cultural genocide". You saw this most prominently with American, Canadian, and Mexican residential schools, as well as literally everything the British did in Ireland - you take the kids away from their heritage when they're young and basically drown them in their colonizer's heritage. You punish them for speaking about their old lives, speaking their native cultural tongue, or doing anything to associate with their old life. You do this severely, frequently, publicly and without ceasing. Eventually the kid "forgets" about their old culture as a defense mechanism, and they generally don't know enough to pass on those traditions, culture, or language.

Legally, this is a recognized definition of genocide. Russia has made it clear since before the war started that they don't want to content themselves with simply killing Ukrainian soldiers or occupying Ukrainian lands, their ultimate goal is the elimination of the CONCEPT of Ukraine as anything but part of Russia.

Actually, I think so. Remember that this guy wanted to gun down the Floyd protests not because he didn't like the politics, but according to him, "good presidents don't have riots". He was willing to kill thousands of people just to preserve his own mental image of himself.

My governor has said he's not sending in troops anywhere (after someone asked), but considering the EO allows the SecDef to literally send troops anywhere they feel is a "disruption of public order" in whatever quantity and capacity he deems fit, and considering Hegseth seems to be pretty much an administration hand puppet at this point...I'll still go, but I'm definitely planning on knowing my escape routes just in case.

Yeah, the training for these includes "well here's what not to do ***wink***".

I was about to say, legally this is an act of war. There's also some parliamentarian from the EU on there, so...

Oh, Russia has an idea of their envisioned future. They even have a checklist for it.

Unfortunately, a good chunk of the steps are "and then the country surrenders to the overwhelming might of the Russian military".

More specifically, there's now a generation of people who didn't get their ass beat for using their left hand (this was surprisingly common up through *the fucking 90s* in some places) and now they want leisure goods that are left-hand-capable.

Genocide. The Clinton admin invented the term "ethnic cleansing" to justify the US government disobeying their own laws requiring intervention against genocide (at that point, in Rwanda).

Let's call it what it is.

Surprisingly, a lot of the white nationalist organs here in the US have VERY intimate contact with white national South African groups. I'm wondering how many of them are coming here to avoid getting caught in government dragnets in SA. Lots of the bombmaking know-how and quite a lot of weapons flowed into South Africa during the fight to keep apartheid from the 60s-90s (and now the fight to either topple the post-apartheid government or create a separatist state where they can institute apartheid), and much of THAT was supplied by contacts in the American KKK. Weird Little Guys did an incredible deep dive on the interlinking of the white nationalist movement internationally with white South African resistance to the ANC and the DeClerc and post-DeClerc governments.

Literally President Trump has said that, I believe in his first term. Something about how there shouldn't be rules in war, and whatever happens/whoever happens to be in the crossfire, happens.

I was about to say, they tried. They have been trying for three years. They've committed a TON more forces than Ukraine, and still haven't made significant progress. The invasion is a military failure on pretty much every level, and it's only the most delusional that think Russia still has any chance of actually pulling off a successful annexation or occupation for any significant length of time.

You forgot the Spam.

Yeah, they chose El Salvador because they've literally abolished due process. It's like Cambodia again - someone accuses you and you're just instantly taken away. You MIGHT get to see a judge after you're imprisoned for a month or two, likely after you've been beaten half to death so you'll confess to anything just to make the pain stop. It's a dressed up version of Duterte's Philippines - we'll kidnap you and let you die, rather than just some death squad rolling up to your door (because that doesn't play well to the media and the other can be dressed up as "law and order").

Precisely this. You route a shipment to an un-tarriffed/un-embargoed country, usually to a shell company or something, and then ship it to wherever using THAT country as the country of origin. It's a pretty common way of avoiding arms embargoes.

Which is what they were doing with the old Maxims in Ukraine. Slap it down in a defensive position, where you don't have to move it (or, in a few cases, weld that shit to a pintle mount in the back of a truck), and you can keep firing until the barrel melts or you don't have anything left to shoot.

Apparently Trump is absolutely fucking terrified of people poisoning his food. It's why he eats like shit - random fast food is harder to poison.