Open mike 18/01/2025
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Houthi leader, says they will enforce the ceasefire against any Israeli breaches.
Abdul-Malik Al-Houthi is the current leader of the Houthi political, religious and militant movement.
Who said young people can't do politics?
How much longer will these young people remain disenfranchised?
When it comes to making government policy, 'All Politics is Pressure'
The Left are generally understood to represent working people and those on fixed and low incomes. The Left don't have money, but the Left sometimes apply political pressure to influence policy with our numbers.
The Right generally represent the business and the Well Off. The Right don't have the numbers, the Right always apply political pressure to influence policy with their money.
As a popululist politician, Trump understands the importance of numbers and always talks up the numbers at his rallies, and most notoriously at his last inauguration claiming, against all evidence that it was the biggest ever.
This time, because of bad weather, Trump has dispensed with an open air inauguration, to move the ceremony indoors, invitation only.
In effect the Trump administration has begun a fire sale of government policies, for invited guests.
The bidding has started at a quarter of a billion dollars.
The inauguration of Trump is costing several million dollars, more like the cost of a king's coronation than a democratically elected leader taking the oath.
Now I know why it is costing so much.
Security.
All those rich pricks together on the same stage at the same time.
What a tempting target for a modern day Robin Hood.
Will no one think of the MAGA mega-donors who gave millions to Trump’s inauguration to secure a prime seat looking down the Mall – and now, if they're lucky, they might get to watch the big screen at the local footy ground.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:t6ubj2wlhc34awzcymh3qpur/post/3lfxu2r3o5c2y?
CNN —
President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration will be moved indoors, he announced Friday, due to dangerously cold temperatures projected in the nation’s capital.
“I have ordered the Inauguration Address, in addition to prayers and other speeches, to be delivered in the United States Capitol Rotunda, as was used by Ronald Reagan in 1985, also because of very cold weather,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
“We will open Capital One Arena on Monday for LIVE viewing of this Historic event, and to host the Presidential Parade. I will join the crowd at Capital One, after my Swearing In,” Trump added.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/17/politics/inauguration-moving-indoors-cold-weather/index.html
That’s just oversimplified and dogmatic and seems to be one of your favourite slogans – do you have bumper sticker stating this or a T-shirt?
For example, it excludes negotiation, persuasion, and compromise in the policy-making process, to name just a few important aspects that you’ve ignored. Also, politics is much more than policy making.
"……it ['pressure'] excludes negotiation, persuasion, and compromise in the policy-making process, to name just a few important aspects that you’ve ignored. Also, politics is much more than policy making."
'Pressure doesn't exclude, negotiation, persuasion, and compromise. I certainly don't exclude them, And I have used all of these tactics alongside the application of political pressure.
I would even add one more to your list, that I have had on occasion to use.
When I don't have anything concrete to back up my persuasion and negotiating position, there is always bluff.
But it is a tactic to use rarely and judiciously.
Good to know that you and I are in agreement on this. BTW, they’re not ‘tactics’.
Bluffing (e.g. fake it until you make it) is a ploy to win a game, not for good faith negotiations in government policy making.
Activities that raise awareness and elicit support are not pressure per se either.
The Guardian reports that Chrysta Freeland, Trudeau's deputy, is running for Liberal leadership. She's got the smarts, for sure.
' “Being strong means being clear with our American neighbours: we love our country just as much as you love yours. If you hit us, we will hit back. We will not escalate, but we will never back down,” she said, adding the Canadian response to tariffs would be “precisely and painfully” targeted…“Canada is America’s largest export market – bigger than China, Japan, the UK, and France combined. If pushed, our response will be the single largest trade blow the US economy has ever endured.” '
link please.
As reported by the Guardian, and others.
Ta!
Guy's an astronomer so he'll know his stuff.
@plutokiller.com
Just had a sample of the Eaton Fire ash that is in my driveway run on the department XRF. Is there titanium (new house paint)? Yup. Lead (old house paint)? You betcha. Heavy metals? Check. Treat that ash like it's toxic folks (because it is)
[…]
@plutokiller.com
·
4h
note I really need to go back and dig ~6 inches down and take a control sample. Possibly I've been bathing in this stuff the whole time.
https://bsky.app/profile/plutokiller.com/post/3lfxkvhkypc2u
President Trunp, "tear down this wall!" If only…
Like some sort of internal column….that should have a number..
//
.
An unpaid group of billionaires, tech executives and some disciples of Peter Thiel, a powerful Republican donor, are preparing to take up unofficial positions in the U.S. government in the name of cost-cutting.
As President-elect Donald J. Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency girds for battle against “wasteful” spending, it is preparing to dispatch individuals with ties to its co-leaders, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to agencies across the federal government.
[…]
The representatives will largely be stationed inside federal agencies. After some consideration by top officials, DOGE itself is now unlikely to incorporate as an organized outside entity or nonprofit. Instead, it is likely to exist as more of a brand for an interlinked group of aspirational leaders who are on joint group chats and share a loyalty to Mr. Musk or Mr. Ramaswamy.
https://archive.li/79iJK
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/12/us/politics/elon-musk-doge-government-trump.html
the fix is in to take billions
https://hachyderm.io/@molly0xfff/113846620492941793
In elections and political influence
After his inauguration, Trump is likely to quickly release an executive order designating crypto as a national priority.11 This would not be the first crypto-related executive order — Biden had his own — but the focus on consumer protection and financial risks in Biden’s order is likely to be completely absent in Trump’s. Instead, Trump’s will most likely formalize the signal — already being received loud and clear in Washington, as I outline in a moment — that the crypto industry is a friend to Trump and needs to be treated accordingly. The order will also likely establish a crypto advisory council, though this is not any big surprise given that Trump has already announced that such a council will exist when he announced it would be led by Bo Hines (for some mystifying reason that I would still quite like to learn more about) [I72]
https://archive.li/BpB1C#selection-769.0-791.2
https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-74/
Of course, closer to home, the Regulation Bill and ACT's over-funded Ministry of Red Tape are well on their way.
Buy the author a drink.
.
I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down – I just didn’t expect them to be such losers
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg’s desperation to be cool as they suck up to Donald Trump is so cringe it makes my skin crawl
[…]
Climate crises keep coming, genocides continue, women keep getting murdered, art is being strangled to death by AI, bigotry is on the rise, social progress is being rolled back … AND these men insist on being cringe? It’s a rotten cherry on top. This combination of evil and embarrassment is a unique horror, one that science fiction has failed to prepare us for. The second-hand embarrassment we have to endure gets even more potent when combined with other modern influences on young men, like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate.
Peterson is a big voice in men’s rights – well, a small Kermit’s voice in men’s rights – and he’s also an embarrassment. So much so that he has his own Know Your Meme page, which covers that time he reportedly retweeted an image from a fetish film, apparently believing it was a Chinese communist “sperm extraction” facility. He deleted it shortly afterwards.
Tate is facing human trafficking charges but rose to fame as a voice for young men, a misogynist in bad outfits who does really cool things like smoking cigars, wearing sunnies inside and trying to drag human rights back 100 years.
Living your life to impress other men by hating women is one of the most embarrassing things I can imagine. Looking up to any of these men for how to live your life is even sadder.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/16/i-knew-one-day-id-have-to-watch-powerful-men-burn-the-world-down-i-just-didnt-expect-them-to-be-such-losers
Musk, Zuckerberg,Peterson and assorted other cooker inspiring jerkwits. Dangerous.. certainly good to be aware of and, at times, to just laugh at.
The Prof IS Kermit. Lol……
Clean your own room !
Realism.
Gaza was the urgent issue. The downside – a renewal of the the Trump Netanyahu "axis".
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/17/trumps-role-in-gaza-ceasefire-fuels-arab-american-anger-with-biden
Tech bros who want to break up nation states. Quinn Slobodian backgrounds the tech right.
'… Silicon Valley figures who will share the podium with Trump have long professed a basic antagonism towards the state as such. Some in their circle… have even laid out detailed blueprints for “exiting” the nation state, including the creation of new private polities or “network states”….In 2009, Thiel fantasised about cracking up the world map into thousands of new nations.'
What would a post-state world look like? Like Haiti for a good few decades, I imagine. Nation states are infinitely more productive because daily interactions are codified, and often policed. Otherwise, each trade/negotiation must start from scratch.
"Why aren't you in the Hague?"
The logic of genocidal maniacs
Bibi I know you are killing thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza.
Yes I admit it, but Joe, you killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Dresden.
Oh very well then. Carry on, here are some more bombs and missiles so you can keep killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians.
But Bibi that is because the Germans and Japanese killed tens of thousands of innocent civ