amerika

[zorkan]

An American in Paris won 6 Oscars, but not now.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2kvqnx0dnno

I can confirm that Parisians never liked Americans because they won't attempt French.
Americans also think that they invented the English language.
They are always welcome in the UK.

[Tank]

I read that earlier.

[Icarus]

There are suspicions that the Trump tariff pronouncements were schemes to help enrich his buddies.  Tariffs cause world wide stock value shrinkage.......buy low.....wait a few days and values rise sharply.   Maybe so But I am not sure  that Trump is smart enough or clever enough to figure that out, Some of his influential cohorts may well be smart enough........

[Recusant]

He's had a fascination with tariffs for a long time so would be easily manipulated, and well worth it to the right players. Like serious money--multimillions easily.

[Dark Lightning]

The chump actually commented that some billionaire friends had made money in the Stock Market when it fluctuated.

[billy rubin]

how hard is french? it has rules.

je comprend la francais, une petite, peut etre

spanish also

es muy facile, por que es un langue la misma como nada

i dont speak grammatical french or spanish, but i can buy drugs at any town centre

english is impossible, every sentence is a special case. if i werent a native speaker, i wouldnt even try to figure it out

[Tank]

Remember Bush jr complaining that the French didn't have a word for entrepreneur.

[Dark Lightning]

Indeed. That's a special kind of ignorant.

[zorkan]

Have you noticed that Trump acts and speaks like GWB?

"I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace." "We must stop the terror. I call upon all nations, to do everything they can, to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you...now watch this drive." – to reporters while playing golf.

So when Trump talks about tariffs he's really talking about free trade.
 

[Tank]

Unbelievable

[zorkan]

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we," Bush said. "They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

Has Trump learned from a former British politician?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/oct/03/denis-healeys-10-most-celebrated-quotes-former-labour-chancellor

[Asmodean]

There are suspicions that the Trump tariff pronouncements were schemes to help enrich his buddies.  Tariffs cause world wide stock value shrinkage.......buy low.....wait a few days and values rise sharply.   Maybe so But I am not sure  that Trump is smart enough or clever enough to figure that out, Some of his influential cohorts may well be smart enough........

You know... Whether or not it was meant to do that, it certainly did. Mass psychology is quite predictable that way. Heck, even my hobby-investor butt managed to squeeze the tariffs for some profit.

[Recusant]

The grotesque dark comedy of a rabid font of vitriol heaping praise on a malignant purveyor of weaponized ignorance. I imagine the questionable fellow quoted in my signature would be having a grand time skewering these villainous clowns.

"RFK Jr. Is a Top Global Public Health 'Expert' Claims Miller, Sparking Mockery" | New Civil Rights Movement

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — an environmental lawyer, former leader of a children's anti-vaccine organization, and a promoter of conspiracy theories — is being praised by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller as a "foremost" global health expert and a "crown jewel" of the Trump administration.

Kennedy has no medical degree or formal training, nor does he hold any degrees in public health.

Secretary Kennedy's challenges this week include his attempt to fire the newly confirmed Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and announcing that most Americans will not be eligible to receive COVID vaccines without a doctor's prescription and at least one underlying health condition. (Future CDC advisory panel regulations may alter that landscape.)

Kennedy was assailed by medical experts this week when he declared that, while walking through an airport, he could see the "mitochondrial" illness and inflammation of children, which he claimed he could detect "from their faces, from their body movements and from their lack of social connection."

Miller, who also holds no medical degree, told reporters on Friday (video below) that "the CDC's credibility was shattered during the COVID era."

"CDC used to be, of course, seen widely around the world as a premier health agency, and much of the world discovered in the last few years, that CDC was actually staffed by a lot of very partisan, and very political bureaucrats who weren't at all concerned about public health and weren't actually very knowledgeable about public health," he baselessly alleged.

"And we are working hard, and more importantly, Secretary Kennedy — one of the world's foremost voices, advocates, and experts on public health — is working hard to restore the credibility and the integrity of CDC as a scientific organization committed to the scientific method, and getting to the root causes of the public health epidemic in this country," Miller continued.

[Continues . . .]

[Recusant]

"Guns aren't the problem, it's a mental health thing." Then they proceed to gut mental health research and assistance. "Thoughts and prayers" aside, they don't actually give a damn.

"Trump's Mental Health Plan: Defund, Incarcerate, Disappear" | Mother Jones

Federal staffers working on mental health-related issues, meanwhile, have been purged by Trump's government. NIH has lost 7,000 workers, roughly 16 percent of its workforce, through firings and resignations, according to a ProPublica analysis. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) lost an even higher proportion, at 22 percent.

HHS also plans to cut more than $1 billion from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which will be collapsed into a proposed "Administration for a Healthy America," following cuts of $72 million from March's continuing appropriations bill; dwarfing an additional $19 million the agency supposedly plans to earmark to support housing for people with severe mental illness.

. . . [M]ental health research has been a particular focus on the chopping block of DOGE, which terminated hundreds of NIH grants—with NIMH grants accounting for the largest subset, according to a paper published in JAMA in May. Since then, dozens more NIMH grants have been cancelled, although some terminations have been reversed or are likely to be reversed following a slate of legal challenges, according to the database Grant Witness. 

[Continues . . .]

[Recusant]

I find this item genuinely disgusting, but also amusing. The same dark and repellent sort of humor that runs through a lot of the current political scene in Washington DC. The lawyer McCloskey who figures in the story gained prominence for posing brandishing a gun with his wife when some Black Lives Matter protestors walked past their house. He with a military style rifle and she with a chrome plated semiautomatic pistol. Trump has already floated the idea of paying the "patriots" who decided that democracy wasn't to their liking.  I'll skip the scatological comments that come to mind.

"Already Pardoned by Trump, Jan. 6 Rioters Push for Compensation" | The New York Times

The rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, secured a shocking double victory this year.

President Trump granted them clemency for their crimes on his first day back in the White House, and in the months that followed, he allowed his Justice Department to purge many of the federal agents and prosecutors who sought to hold them accountable.

But even though the president has given the rioters their freedom and has taken steps toward satisfying their desire for retribution, they are asking for more. In the past several weeks, the rioters and their lawyers have pushed the Trump administration to pay them restitution for what they believe were unfair prosecutions.

On Thursday, one of the lawyers, Mark McCloskey, said during a public meeting on social media that he had recently met with top officials at the Justice Department and pitched them on a plan to create a special panel that would dole out financial damages to the rioters — much like the arrangement of a special master to award money to the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

[Continues . . .]