Senate The US Politics 2.0 Discussion Thread

Just to be clear, this is the absolute nonsense that right-wing people share on Facebook in order to make sure they believe what they want to believe.

Despite the fact that the security apparatus and concerns were negotiated 31 years ago in 1994 with the US as the key participant. Despite the fact that every Democratic administration, including the last one, had repeatedly already said NATO was off the table. This is a Glitterstimm-level post.

 

Meanwhile, in the real world, South Carolina voted for Trump, is now burning, with some very apocalyptic pictures online and Trump is...

Golfing. ****ing Golfing.

 

Possible hint at the next crazy stuff…

Musk is retweeting and agreeing that the United States should leave NATO and the United Nations. Which has long been a talking point by the GOP, but Trump/Musk have actually been enacting similar long-held talking points, however illegally or clumsy as they’ve been at it. I knew that talk would come up again, eventually. But with Musk bringing it up now, maybe it’s in the near-future.

If the United States does leave both… I wonder how easily it could rejoin, when/if we get a change of the kind of people in power right now. Rejoining the UN could be relatively easy. But would NATO accept again, knowing we could leave again in another few years?

 

I don't know, I'm sceptical.

The US is hell-bent on unifying the world against them, Russia, China and North Korea.

That's not the kind of thing that gets easily forgiven or forgotten. Plus, it's Trump 2, you lot elected the bastard once, watched him cause a load of chaos and then, within a few years, re-elected him! But gave him even more power.

 

Out of curiosity, but rhetorical question -- where is the UN HQ? Also, rhetorical -- what happens if Trump declines to acknowledge the extraterritorial status of the land?

 

A strongly worded UN resolution follows, which gets vetoed by the US.

All the years of whinging from US politicians over paying for this and that boils down to:

After WW2, the US wanted to rule the world, and it mostly succeeded, but ruling the world isn't cheap.

 

I wonder where a new UN HQ might go. Probably somewhere in Europe. But somewhere that has room.

 

Yeah ain't no room in Europe.

 

What I don't understand is this absolute condemnation right now from European leaders towards the United States as if we haven't provided exponential amounts of support to them for the past 100+ years. How does a month and a half of a Trump presidency eradicate all of that? I get that Trump is awful and yada yada yada. But why aren't any European leaders showing any kind of, dare I say, compassion for the United States? Expressing the understanding that clearly things have fallen off quite a bit and the US isn't the nation it used to be. That maybe it's their turn to step up on the world stage right now, while also doing what they can to assist the US in getting back on track for the long term. And once that happens, relations can and will be mended. Hurr durr there might not even be relations to mend because Trump bad. Okay, fair enough. But that hasn't happened yet, people have been talking about the complete collapse of the United States for decades, yet we're still here, and likely will be after Trump's presidency. Are European nations going to just completely cast us out if and when we do get relatively back on track and attempt to mend those relations? Seems a little...unappreciative...for the century of support we have given to European nations leading up now.

 

"I caught you when you slipped on the ice, but then I said you were fat and punched you in face. Why won't you hang out with me?"

 

@A Chorus of Disapproval Article 5 of NATO has been only invoked once by us (United States) after 9/11. Every nation in it and others outside came to the USA aid. Has GWB or any other president since then thanked any of those countries? Heck, Canada, Mexico, Australia, etc sent help with the LA fires. Did Trump say thank you at all??



The United States cannot leave NATO or the UN unless it passes Congress and gets a 2/3 majority in the Senate. That it is not happening. Even half the GOP senate would balk at that. What could happen is that Trump no longer sends funding to NATO. And yes, he will do it or at least try until they realize how dependent we are on NATO for a lot of things, though right now Putin has our intelligence agency heads on speed dial so yeah.

Meanwhile, in Texas:

https://bsky.app/profile/radiofreeflorida.bsky.social/post/3ljiavc3qx22x

Again, why ESPN decided to interview this turd (I apologize to all turds) for a 30 for 30 on Phi Slama Jama and his footage is still on there, I don't know. And while measles continue to wreak havoc there, (NIH still hasn't sent a team down to help with it, which is standard protocol...until now) they are also having a massive bee issue:

https://bsky.app/profile/texastribune.org/post/3lji5z3cy6c2j

 

These are all great examples of what is going to further complicate all of this now, being that any expression of anything that remotely resembles something that somebody in the Trump administration has said is going to be completely misconstrued as being aligned with them.

 

@Luke02 - to enter treaties/alliances/organizerions, you need 2/3. But a President alone can exit one. It’s already happened, many times - WHO, for just one recent big one. The founders created a bias to prevent or leave “entangling alliances.” (Overall, better than the reverse, in my opinion.)
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S2-C2-1-10/ALDE_00012961/

Anyhow, I think it’s misinformation, but there’s a quote going around that Kamala Harris decided against running for governor and semi-officially declaring she’s running for president in 2028. I don’t see it reported outside of social media, so I think it’s misinformation, but putting it out there in case anyone heard anything?

 

Well in short … being a European … we have the feeling you joined exactly THE SAME guys you supported us against. And that is of course not a minor irritation but kind of the betrayal of the core principle of our friendship. Also what you do to your own state right now gives us the feeling we might not have that problem for a four years term. But it could turn into a rather constant shift in loyalties.

So nobody cast out the US, we just perceive you now as part of a block in the world we‘ve never been toooo friendly with.

Ah and a trade war is about to start. Isn’t helping either.

 

The US doesn’t have to formally leave NATO to render it dead. It need only become an unreliable NATO member. And it’s done that. No country with any intelligence can now rely on the United States to meet its obligations to the alliance, including Article 5. But the institution can hobble among and do little things. Just not deterrence on a big scale.

And once this happens, the Europeans will need to (and very likely will) create a separate parallel military alliance without the U.S. A so-called NATO-minus. It may include Canada, and they could recruit Mexico. But they’ll have freedom of action without the US to act as a deterrent to major state-based threats like Russia.

The big question, then, is not if the US will leave NATO. But if it will try to undermine NATO countries in concert with Russia, thereby become an adversary of NATO. Trump has already started this process by undermining the German government by meeting with and favoring a far-right opposition party, which in turn undermines NATO and the EU, as such parties are anti-EU, anti-NATO, and pro allying with Russia.

My guess is that the US will eventually leave NATO, there will arise a new Euro-Atlantic defense alliance without the U.S., and Trump’s America will ally with Russia to undermine Europe, and potentially, to compete with China.

 

@Ghost Even for Trump it would be very theoretically extremely difficult given how again most of the GOP senators would be against it. Many in the GOP are already starting to flinch with what is happening:

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3ljielixryc2n

Not all are from hard core red states/districts, particularly Congressional members. They are starting to feel the heat and that is before the economy has officially collapsed, which is starting to look like it will:

https://bsky.app/profile/carlquintanilla.bsky.social/post/3ljiecorgck2y

Again, it would be easiest for Trump to withhold funding and then collapse on its own and/or we get kicked out.

Going to be interesting as Mark Cuban said, btw watching the GOP if the economy does start to collapse over the next 12-18 months. I definitely at least some of them will be asking for Musk to get fired but obviously the MAGAers see him as a second golden cow.

 

I'm not so sure of that.

So far, the pattern is:

- Trump does something of questionable legality or illegal / outside of his powers
- GOP Reps / Senators / Judges wave it through.

The US only has a system of checks and balances if they are enforced and, currently, they are not, so all bets are off.

On a different note, few things turn a relationship bad than a betrayal, which is what the US reneging on a 30-odd year treaty with Ukraine is a spectacular example of.

 

WW3 also ain't cheap.

 

Funny, the only guys talking that are Trump and Putin.

But yeah, you have people in the US who are arrogant and stupid enough to think they could "win" it.

The world'd be a smoking cinder by the time it was done but those same bastards would be crawling out of their bunkers to declare that they "won".

Edit - the six weeks aspect, it's not just those weeks, or the betrayal of Ukraine, or how Zelensky's been treated, it's also the last decade of Trump and his minions spewing venom at everyone.

 

Because it's fake news. It's a hoax created by the Democrats.

 

Apparently my boss got yelled at driving his Tesla this weekend. Please don't yell at people driving cars. Maybe they knew better, but getting yelled at isn't helping anyone.

I bought plane tickets yesterday, cheapest plane ticket I ever bought to that destination. And I rebooked my NYC hotel for April because prices have gone down, they still have availability. Full disclosure I like to stay in Staten Island because I drive, free parking lots of chargers at my hotel of choice, quick easy free ferry to Manhattan. Subway to anywhere I want to go with a tap of my watch. Point is travel is cheap and available. Economy is not good.

Also I am hearing reports on social media that Republicans are getting death threats from Trump if they consider voting against him. Is this just talk or real? Anyone hear this?