Didn’t the USA have a trade agreement with Canada (NAFTA) which Trump ripped up during his first presidency? And then during that same presidency didn’t Canada and the USA negotiate a new one (USMCA), which Trump ripped up during his second presidency?

They came to an agreement with Canada too, and Iran, before they suddenly decided they didn’t. Agreements with the USA aren’t worth much.

Ah, it has been a few years since I was last traumatized by this. Is it time again?

They used to like to preach about how others should take personal responsibility. But it never rubbed off on them.

I seem to remember he took a poster off the wall to keep as a souvenir, so they killed him. Don’t touch the posters, people.

Seems like in the USA everyone gets treated badly all of the time, except the very richest.

No one is immune to a concerted propaganda campaign. American propaganda has just been a bit more extreme than most, for a bit longer.

You have 10 minutes to clear your desk and get out. Not a team player!

The investment in demonizing scapegoat groups does seem to pay off for the far right. It helps them sell their own ideology as a solution for people’s woes, if they can convince people their problems are caused by the designated scapegoats. It effectively distracts people from the plunder of their lives by rich kleptocrats, while filling them with the kind of misdirected hatred that fascism thrives on.

And it sounds like mainstream Democrats are aligning with Republicans on this. What a surprise!

MAGA’s razor:

Just assume it’s both malice and stupidity.

Deranged paranoid fascist liar. Loved by tens of millions.

Hmm, they sound nice.

That’s a difficult choice. So many good candidates. But we’re still nicer than that, for now.

Senior Democrats would much rather have a Republican who serves the rich than a socialist who serves the people.

He is already responsible for dozens of children dying of measles in Samoa, although he won’t admit responsibility.

It doesn’t matter what color someone is, who they fuck, or what God they follow. It doesn’t matter if they’re disabled physically or mentally. Everyone deserves exactly what they need to be on a level playing field with everyone else. Everyone deserves safety, security, and everything they need to survive. Right now, PEOPLE are struggling. Yes, because others choose to degrade them for whatever reason, and we should focus on that, not what they’re being degraded for.

I think if you’re being persecuted daily for being trans, for example, it’s going to be important to you to call out those who attack trans people, and to stick together with other trans people to fight for your rights. Your identity as a trans person is important because it’s their pretext for oppressing you and it’s your solidarity as a community in fighting that oppression you experience together. Sure, in a sense it’s quite right to say “hey, in the end we’re all just people and we should get past all this identity stuff.” But in reality the only people for whom that move is available in a political context are those with the luxury of not being oppressed for who they are.

The White House has framed the upset victory by Mamdani, who could become New York City’s first Muslim and Indian American mayor, as evidence of uncontrolled migration…

And by “uncontrolled migration” they mean “brown people getting uppity and not knowing their place.”

Ideally it wouldn’t matter. But when people are treated badly because they are not white or not cisgender or not straight, identity becomes a necessary and important tool for unity and resistance. Identity is a political thing.

If it gets wrong enough, people will stop using it. So it would be in the interests of AI companies to pay for good sources of data.

Or at least you’d hope that. In actual fact they’ll be thinking: let’s keep stealing because most people don’t know or care whether what the AI says is true. Besides, they can make money by turning it into a tool for disseminating the views of those who can pay the most.