'Living in the time of Nero'

[TheVat]

9 hours ago, CharonY said:

Honestly, it does not look particularly sophisticated to me. Rather it seems that the standards of the electorate has slipped. I don't think it is worse. It is dumber. Well, perhaps that actually makes it worse.

Seems to be.  To "save money" they are cutting federal workers from the Bonneville Power Authority, and other western grids...jobs that aren't funded from the US Treasury.  The BPA operates on the revenues it makes from selling power generated by federally operated dams.

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5180779-federal-job-cuts-power-grid-resilience/

This level of stupidity makes the most decadent and lead-poisoned Roman consul look like a genius by contrast.

 

9 hours ago, CharonY said:

 

 

 

Edited Friday at 02:00 PM by TheVat

[Peterkin]

9 hours ago, exchemist said:

He is already looking like a prize twat. 

He always did, and neither that nor the crimes nor the bankruptcies, nor the failure to deal effectively with one situation after another, deterred his supporters. The absorption of Canada and Greenland will probably get pushed off the agenda, but Panama and Gaza are still in danger, because he'll find willing accomplices. 

But the country he's damaging most and fastest is his own.  

[CharonY]

Just to highlight the highly, incredibly intelligent decision-making and power takeover process:

 

Quote

Just moments before the blowup with Mr. Rubio, Mr. Musk and the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, went back and forth about the state of the Federal Aviation Administration’s equipment for tracking airplanes and what kind of fix was needed. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, jumped in to support Mr. Musk.

Mr. Duffy said the young staff of Mr. Musk’s team was trying to lay off air traffic controllers. What am I supposed to do? Mr. Duffy said. I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now, and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers?

Mr. Musk told Mr. Duffy that his assertion was a “lie.” Mr. Duffy insisted it was not; he had heard it from them directly. Mr. Musk, asking who had been fired, said: Give me their names. Tell me their names.

 

 

Mr. Duffy said there were not any names, because he had stopped them from being fired. At another point, Mr. Musk insisted that people hired under diversity, equity and inclusion programs were working in control towers. Mr. Duffy pushed back and Mr. Musk did not add details, but said during the longer back and forth that Mr. Duffy had his phone number and should call him if he had any issues to raise.

The exchange ended with Mr. Trump telling Mr. Duffy that he had to hire people from M.I.T. as air traffic controllers. These air traffic controllers need to be “geniuses,” he said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/us/politics/trump-musk-doge-power.html

[exchemist]

If you have 8 minutes to spare, watch this speech in the French Senate (English subtitles):

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/danbowyer_vivelaeurope-ugcPost-7303368801457176578-T0B_?utm_medium=ios_app&rcm=ACoAAAGxW24BfNLDShCe4dF4XTjG78YdhXJPrbw&utm_source=social_share_send&utm_campaign=messages

It lays out with brutal clarity the nature of the change that has occurred and the imperative that Europe now faces. 

It also, by the way, shows great respect for the democratic traditions of the American people and expresses the hope that they will make their voices heard and arrest the rapid slide into dictatorship that is now taking place. 

As a Brit, I also noted in particular the vindication of France's traditional defence policy of independence from the USA (ever since de Gaulle's time) and the embrace of the UK as an essential defence partner. 

But perhaps the most pointed line of all is that: "....it took only only one month, three weeks and two days to dismantle the Weimar Republic and its constitution." 

The speaker is Claude Malhuret, a Gaullist senator. A translation of part of it is already on his Wiki entry:

QUOTE

"Washington has become the court of Nero, an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers, and a jester [actually he says bouffon, i.e. buffoon] high on ketamine (Elon Musk) in charge of purging the civil service. This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose higher tariffs on you than on his enemies and will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you."[10]

UNQUOTE

Translation of the full speech here: https://www.newsletter.samuel-warde.com/p/were-fighting-against-a-dictator

 

Edited Sunday at 10:00 AM by exchemist

[toucana]

On 3/9/2025 at 9:43 AM, exchemist said:

If you have 8 minutes to spare, watch this speech in the French Senate (English subtitles):

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/danbowyer_vivelaeurope-ugcPost-7303368801457176578-T0B_?utm_medium=ios_app&rcm=ACoAAAGxW24BfNLDShCe4dF4XTjG78YdhXJPrbw&utm_source=social_share_send&utm_campaign=messages

It lays out with brutal clarity the nature of the change that has occurred and the imperative that Europe now faces. 

Below is another full video of Claude Malhuret’s 8:32m speech on YT as originally delivered in French.

There is an English translation in captions, but I would recommend turning on the French auto-subtitling and YT transcript, in order to catch some of the nuances that a number of the English translations missed.

For example - in one early passage at 0:43 elapsed where the simultaneous English translation said “…hard to translate", what the French actually said was:

Quote

 

‘Le roi du deal est en train de montrer ce qu’est l’art du deal à plat ventre. Il pense qu’il va intimider la Chine en se couchant devant Putin mais Xin Ji Ping devant un tel naufrage ese sans doute en train de’accélérer les préparatifs de l’invasion de Taiwan.”

which means:

“The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is by lying flat on his belly. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down in front of Putin, but Xin Ji Ping in the face of such a shipwreck is probably speeding up preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.”

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unSSHfIs3U0

[exchemist]

43 minutes ago, toucana said:

Below is another full video of Claude Malhuret’s 8:32m speech on YT as originally delivered in French.

There is an English translation in captions, but I would recommend turning on the French auto-subtitling and YT transcript, in order to catch some of the nuances that a number of the English translations missed.

For example - in one early passage at 0:43 elapsed where the simultaneous English translation said “…hard to translate", what the French actually said was:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unSSHfIs3U0

Well that’s true.  But, as I’ve commented previously, I think Trump would be perfectly happy to see China swallow Taiwan, so long as the high end chips can be made in the USA. In fact, if both Ukraine and Taiwan were to be swallowed, that would give him the symmetry he would like to be able to claim for his own territorial designs, on Greenland, Panama and maybe even Canada. 

[Sensei]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2025/03/10/trumps-net-worth-slides-300-million-as-trump-media-shares-hit-5-month-low/

"President Donald Trump’s net worth fell nearly $300 million Monday, continuing a months-long slide as Trump Media & Technology Group shares tumbled over 11% and reached their lowest point since October."

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-media-truth-social-400-million-loss-sales-revenue-decline/

"Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of President Trump's social networking site Truth Social, said it lost $400.9 million last year, while its annual revenue declined 12% to $3.6 million."

 

This company is a scam:

"Citing its "early development stage," the parent company based in Sarasota, Florida, said it doesn't report "traditional key performance indicators" used by other social media companies, such as how many people have signed up for the service, use it on a daily or monthly basis or see its ads."

 

Any company that broadcasts online ads for its clients must provide statistics on how many viewers have seen them.

Without such basic instruments, it makes no sense for such an IT company to exist, and it makes no sense to publish ads on such a platform.

 

How many people have seen an ad is the easiest thing you can do in a few minutes of programming, you just have to do a hit counter. Not authoritative, but better than nothing  Better is a unique visitor counter.

Post-factum, the number of hits/unique hits on the site can be obtained by analyzing the web server logs.

If someone does not have a tool to analyze server logs, he may not even know that he has a hacker attack on servers. These are such basic things that even home sites from '90 had such information..

 

If I were a government employee fired by DT, I would be busy analyzing who is buying and selling shares of his companies.

When you enter a cesspool, there is so much shit that you don't know what to choose from.

Shifting shares from one basket to another, hoping that some suckers will join in and then be left with nothing on the price hill.

 

[CharonY]

4 hours ago, Sensei said:

This company is a scam:

"Citing its "early development stage," the parent company based in Sarasota, Florida, said it doesn't report "traditional key performance indicators" used by other social media companies, such as how many people have signed up for the service, use it on a daily or monthly basis or see its ads."

 

Any company that broadcasts online ads for its clients must provide statistics on how many viewers have seen them.

Without such basic instruments, it makes no sense for such an IT company to exist, and it makes no sense to publish ads on such a platform.

For some reasons I am not surprised that a company led by a convicted felon whose organizations and business have been found to commit fraud, is in fact fraudulent.

[J.C.MacSwell]

Maybe we are being a little hard on Trump. We tend to think of Ukrainian kids, whose lives he affects, foreign aid and social security cuts, or are own self interests, prices of groceries etc. I could go on.

Trump is above all that. Maybe in a good way. He does have his good side.

Here he is taking his own valuable time, when he could be golfing, to support a friend who has just lost a lot of money in the last couple days on the stock market. Probably thousands of times more than all of us here reading this has ever lost combined.

President Donald Trump, alongside Tesla CEO Elon Musk, speaks next to a Tesla vehicle at the South Portico of the White House on Tuesday.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/elon-musk/trump-musk-tesla-white-house-showroom-buys-car-rcna195905

Makes you think. Doesn't it? Maybe he's not such a bad guy after all.

Won't anyone think of the billionaires?

 

Edited 18 hours ago by J.C.MacSwell

[CharonY]

12 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Won't anyone think of the billionaires?

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/elon-musk/trump-musk-tesla-white-house-showroom-buys-car-rcna195905

Especially the billionaires who, after losing the GPD of a country is still the richest person on Earth. I just don't get why folks worship him or even think that he is one of them.