Obama benefited from being barely in office in 2009 when he got the prize. I imagine the committee in Oslo regretted their decision later.

In a time of handwriting, you could make clearer that This Was a Title without having to say it was a title or putting it in quotation marks.

I would say the powerfulness of the narrative remains strong. The big corporations find ways to the cheapest way of doing business like most rivers find the sea. It doesn't have to be switching from a developed country with socialist tax code going to a developing country where labor is cheap. You can see it in the microcosm of the EU. The Republic of Ireland has favorable taxes and a less harsh data security watchdog so big tech companies headquarter there. Amazon sits in Luxembourg for similar reasons. Wages are cheaper in the East so manufacturing jobs tend to move there (or, sadly, the workforce moves west and gets paid cents on the Euro working in Central and Western Europe). If a government increases labor costs by demanding more benefits for workers, you reach a tipping point where companies pack up and move. Not all at once but after a while the creek becomes a river. That's the spectre haunting Europe these days. It's not just about a billionaire wealth tax, it's also about the levies in employment, etc. They all need to be similar in the tax codes for the equal playing field the EU apparatus idealizes. When they're not you move the mountain range out of the way for the river to find the sea more directly.

Trump's terrific tariffs are supposed to create a pull effect, making the US attractive to manufacturing jobs. I think he will fail because be will drive up the cost of living so much that market demand will not rise along with his expectations, making investing in factories in the US ultimately not enticing enough. Never mind the fact that corporations fear uncertainty more than the Beelzebub.

If my glib comparison is what you jump onto here, then have at it and virtue signal to your heart's content.

Ein schönes Maimai, von dem ich dennoch hoffte, ich hätte es nie gesehen.

Zucker. Säugling.

You know who has the government's ear? Ultra rich people. And they feed the legislators the horror scenario that higher taxes would mean they take their money and all their business and all the jobs attached to those to somewhere with lower taxes. And then they won't get more in tax revenue while at the same time increasing benefits spending. It's the billionaires' lose/lose scenario. It's a powerful narrative. The only way to fix this is to have all countries adopt similar tax codes. And that is about as likely as Putin getting the Nobel Peace Prize.

I would say "stupid" is a judgement you should keep between your ears. I think Americans are undereducated before they get released into a mad for-profit higher education system that gives them debts for life (but hitherto also great sciencing at a high level). The strong cultural undercurrent of exceptionalism hardly ever lets them look elsewhere for comparison. And the political system, which is based on who can spend more money, not so much on ideas, is proving to be a system that's rarely bringing out the best people for top jobs. But it's a dog and pony show and that favors characters over good policies. The fragmentation of people all watching the same news show at night 3 decades ago, to watching partisan 24h news channels 2 decades ago, to splintering even further on the socials now adds to the problem. There is no largely unified audience with the same facts at their disposal.

It's also nice that Trump is now dismantling the democratic state because voting in the US always gets filtered through electoral colleges and gerimandered districts, skewing results to favor the two main parties, often only one of them. It was pretend-democratic until now.

Something that gets overlooked easily is the long history of fascist rules that was in place in the south after the civil war. Jim Crow laws masqueraded as democracy for a long time and every time courts tried to put a stop to it, the white people in charge found other ways to be a-holes. That's part of American culture already.

America has always had a penchant for whacky leaders. Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. None of them fit my idea of a virtuous leader. But at least the ones this century adhered to a decorum, an unwritten standard of how to behave as president. Nixon didn't want to get caught. Trump doesn't give a sh!t. So the leadership culture has shifted, not for the better.

All this mixes a large chunk, an uncurious population that still sees itself pretty much as a role model for the world, falling for simple populist messages. It should also be said that tarring all Americans with the same brush is unfair. I think it was the votes of less than a third of eligible voters that made Trump 2.0 a reality, roughly another third just behind it, with the remainder not bothering to vote at all. I would say the often fantasized silent majority is actually not pro Trump.

So calling all Americans stupid is not right. There are a lot of people hurting right now as they watch their country develop in a bad way. We need those people to stand up and fight and calling them names doesn't help.

(Other countries have gone down similar routes, have had whacky leaders, have done questionable things. The US is not alone on this path.)

If you want to know where it is going in the short-term, have a look at Orban's Hungary. Rightwing populist voted in and then got to work at dismantling the state. Control judges appointments, curb the power of the judicial branch, silence critical media, pick a group to scapegoat, buddy of Putin. The list goes on. Democracy only works if people defend it and from my outside POV there aren't enough people doing that just yet. It's worse in Trump 2.0 because this time he came prepared.

There are already horror stories about people being caught up wrongly in the deportation efforts. That's using very mild language for very traumatic events here. It's come to a point where erstwhile allies of the US are advising their citizens not to travel to the US. Because they have lost faith in the rule of law there. Take a minute to let that sink in.

If you're a US citizen, resist. The free state is under threat. If you're an immigrant, be careful.

I believe you should fart excessively around it and indeed encourage fellow commuters to join in, as it will provide terrible air quality results here. Which will in turn improve ventilation measures in this area, which would not have happened otherwise. Checkmate! The act of observing alters the results!

Just for some German context: the Nazi salute is not covered by any freedom of expression or opinion in a political context. What Elon did on stage would have landed him in a German court. Similar restrictions apply to displaying certain symbols, e.g. the swastika. German cops are legally required to intervene when they see them in public.

I don't know the video in question, I don't know if the cops overreacted - a reaction was required though.

I don't think they know for sure where it will end up but no matter what it will be, it will be brilliant, it will be the greatest, and it will have been the plan all along.

Rich people like to keep their money. So the only objective right now is to dismantle the oversight within government. It's not government efficiency they're after but removal of impediments to big business interests. That's the Melon side of the plan. It's his ROI. It's also is MO. Tabula Rasa everything and then build anew. It didn't work for Twitter. I don't think it will work for a federal government. We've already seen lots of unintended side effects. Oops, we fired the guys who look after the nukes. Lives will be lost here and there but, cynically, not enough to mobilize the masses.

It is of course worrying that Trump said as much as wanting to enlarge the US again. I'm not sure yet if that's just a dead cat he's thrown on table to distract us from Melon or if that's really the plan. It worried the US NATO ally Denmark enough to massively increase their defense budget over Greenland. Trump likes to be contrarian. He feeds off the stir he causes. He never built the wall, Mexico never paid for it. But he reveled in the reactions. Greenland could be a similar thing but I'm not sure yet.

It's worrying me the amount of sh!t the lgbtq+ community is getting, especially the T. There is danger there. I don't think Trump cares an awful lot about this issue, he just likes it as a way to unite the sleepy, the anti-woke behind him. But there are people behind him and with power now that do care, that do want to please their leader. And that creates a maelstrom of zealous a-holes trying to one-up each other with cruelty to score browny points with the boss. When I think this through, I fear citizen liberty is most under threat here.

I don't believe a world war with nukes is what they're after. You cannot really prosper as a corporation if the planet is barely habitable due to the radiation and the nuclear winter. It would be bad for Wall Street. But they wouldn't mind a few conflicts comparable to Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine. While nukes have been threatened, they haven't been used. So it's a conventional war and that's good for arms manufacturers.

In simple terms, Trump's cozying up to Vlad actually decreases the threat of a world war III, at least in the short term. It reduces the number of trouble hotspots. There were big ones between the US and Russia (until January 25) and between the US and China. Trump parroting Kremlin talking points and showing the rest of NATO the middle finger reduces hotspots with Russia. Russia is on relatively friendly terms with China and could probably meditate issues between China and the US. At least in the short term, that's not a bad thing. But it isn't stable. It remains to be seen if Europe plus Canada plus X can fill the vacuum and that would reignite hotspots with Russia again.

I do agree that climate change poses a threat. I don't think the billionaires worry so much about it beyond buying New Zealand and blanketing it with villas with bunkers. But it is a threat to maintaining order when the people get hit with more severe tornados, droughts, etc. Best way to maintain order is an authoritarian government.

Trump is vindictive and petty. He would take revenge somehow. Whether it is just a very STABLE GENIUS tirade on lies.social or trade sanctions or a threat to invade the country is anybody's guess. But they're all on the table and he's got the eternal memory of an elephant. That's why every leader knows they have to go in with some honey first. They pay him a compliment or bring something he wants or likes. Then they can play hardball if they have to but you gotta appeal to the frail ego first. And that's why few leadership people will call him stupid in public or even to his face. They will hide the stupid medicine in some rhetorical sugar until their country is economically and militarily independent from a Trump government.

I am no leader, praise the heavens, and I wouldn't call him stupid. He's uneducated in many areas outside real estate development. He's got the interpersonal maturity of a 4yo. But he is street savvy and media savvy. There's a reason why he is this popular with his followers.