So much for "Man of Peace" getting the Nobel peace-prize. The fucking Putin-loving moron.

He’s still done more than any of the Euro bureaucrats, and he’s only been in office a month. Europe looks like it wants to fight to the very last Ukrainian because they don’t like Putin. I wonder who will start world war 3?

Huge.

Maybe that’s why Trump hasn’t threatened tariffs on Australia.

Thanks

Sounds like an interesting read. Do you know of a free copy of the essay, or did you buy it? I’ll read it then comment.

AltGov: Bureaucrats in revolt.

According to the guardian:

Calling itself #AltGov, the network has developed a visible, public-facing presence in recent weeks through Bluesky accounts, most of which bear the names or initials of federal agencies, aimed at getting information out to the public – and correcting disinformation – about the chaos being unleashed by the Trump administration.

With 40 accounts to date, their collective megaphone is getting louder, as most of the accounts have tens of thousands of followers, with “Alt CDC (they/them)” being the largest, at nearly 95,000 followers.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/26/altgov-elon-musk-doge-federal-workers

A small band of bureaucrats have taken their anti-Trump efforts to social media, turning their conspiracy theories into outright government insubordination. At best this appears to be a non-story. The “AltGov” operates on an app called Bluesky, known for congealing woke and weird political and fetish communities into information silos, protected from any other information. The presence of preferred pronouns indicate their woke bonafides and the live-action-roleplaying indicative of this sort of ideology.

But knowing the weaknesses involved and the absence of any opposition in these silos, radicalization is almost inevitable. How far will they take it? Sabotage? Murder? Terrorism?

Do notice that nobody is cheering for the trade war and the tariffs. Not even @NOS4A2 (even if he lives in Canada).

I cheer retaliatory tariffs. It’s not fair that everyone gets to tariff the US but the US is not allowed to tariff them. The reason we do not talk about tariffs otherwise and you never made a peep during other trade wars is because only Trump can make everyone freak out about it.

A kindly gesture by the British king and PM, who appears to be acting above the typical fear and loathing as indicated by the media narratives, even while the cameras are running. Knowing the froth this might bring among the moral commissars and busybodies, the public display might prove politically inconvenient, or it could signal the waning relevance of that class of intelligentsia.

Should the public display only mask the private ones as it does in other countries, I guess we’ll soon find out.

AG Bondi claimed on Fox News that we might see some Jeffry Epstein info today. I suspect it’s a huge bust, and anything pertaining to who else might have been involved will or has gone missing, but who knows?

Your government at work.

Gabbard Says More Than 100 Intelligence Officers Fired for Chat Messages
The chats had been set up to discuss sensitive security matters. But a group of employees used them for discussions that contained sexual themes, intelligence officials said this week.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/us/politics/gabbard-nsa-firing-explicit-chat.html

It turns out the intel community is just a bunch of redditors.

Things are moving swiftly in Europe. Perhaps peace is on the horizon.

US, Ukraine agree to terms of critical minerals deal

https://www.reuters.com/world/zelenskiy-plans-travel-us-meet-trump-minerals-deal-sources-say-2025-02-25/

It is interesting to wonder what would become of Europe without American hegemony to hide behind for the past half century. Would they be able to afford their welfare states had American soldiers never defended them while they slept and subsidized their lifestyles? Perhaps now we can find out.

At any rate, if Germany is any indication, it appears they squandered that opportunity and followed their natural inclination towards totalitarianism. Massive censorship regimes and online “safety” bills brought about by frigid commissars stand largely unopposed by the people they are meant to censor, and routinely do. And it appears no party of freedom rises to correct the trajectory, just right-and-left versions of the same regime.

Now that their benefactor pulls away and no longer supports their chosen trajectory, it’s no surprise they nip at the hand that has fed them for so long. What more can be said about the birthplace of fascism and communism, save for that the European Union is beginning to look like the Soviet one.

Expect some fire.

Sorry, I don’t follow Finnish politics. No matter who leads, I bet they’re beholden to Brussels.

No, I do feel bad for the EU members and all those countries who have essentially been doing the bidding of the US for decades. I don’t know why they never disengaged years ago, especially given the thankless anti-US sentiment which seems regnant there. How you can trust the leaders who have left you so unprepared to stand on your own feet while rattling their sabres and funding that war, I’m not sure, but I doubt any change is forthcoming.

But it was only a matter of time until that umbilical was cut. And now, given the totalitarian trends of those governments, it seems like the perfect time to wean yourself off the tit. Don’t you think?

Nor should the US trust trading with the EU. The U.S. has a 2.5% tariff on Europe’s vehicle imports, for example, while the EU charges U.S. imports at 10%. It’s bad when Trump does it but we’re silent when the EU does it, it seems. All they have to do is be fair and they have nothing to fear, but I don’t think fair trade is in their capacity.

Strikingly similar? It's not even close. I'm not sure if you're joking or trying to pull a fast one.

It’s text. It doesn’t sound like anything. Are the voices in your head throwing you off?

Last I heard your president was raving with celebrities and taking drug tests.

JD’s historic speech wasn’t for Europeans, it was for the stuffy bureaucrats in the room, many of whom were wearing military uniforms for some reason. In fact Vance defended the European citizens who were roundly silenced by the weak commissars of European governments for the smallest of speech and thought crimes. Does anyone in the EU do the same? The parasitic tentacles of the EU better find another host to suck the blood from because the Great Satan is no longer going to stand around and allow it, especially when the Old World descends back into the tyranny that ruined it in the first place.

I am Canadian.

No, I agree with all you wrote Javi.

I am American.

But you're absolutely right about everything else. I believe the US should not have inserted itself in European affairs, policed the world, and it is culpable for all of which you mention. Its cultural imperialism has rendered the EU into an overtaxed woke tyranny, a state of affairs which many seek to defend. For a while Europeans were too busy enjoying their freedoms to want to defend them. Who knows where you'd be if the Americans hadn't infiltrated the European psyche? I'm not sure. All I know is it needs to end, and that time might be now.

I've always questioned the theory of life which underlies modern education. It seems geared towards vocation, the development of mechanical faculties for the service of the mechanical organization of society, the primer for drudgery. I feel like it assumes the mistaken anthropology that man is little more than Aristotle's zoon politikon, a state animal, and one ought to be trained in the maintenance of these kinds of institutions.

I suppose the rise and fall of classical education is indicative of the trust and belief in these institutions because it isn't necessarily connected to the maintenance of any of them. I know for myself that I've learned more from how classical writers viewed the world than any bureaucratic curriculum. It's just a shame that I hadn't known of them earlier.

JD Vance’s speech to Europe’s elites was a dressing-down of the old establishment for their totalitarianism. In it he reiterated what he thought were the shared values of freedom, the ones both purported to fight for in the latter half of the last century, all of which seems to have disappeared in the next.

But we ought to remember that Europe was the cauldron of not only the politics of freedom, but also of repression and absolutism. Now, at this moment, it’s difficult to discern which spirit prevails on that continent.

In Germany you can be arrested for insulting a politician online. 60 minutes just did a little show on it, revealing to millions of Americans the political state of that country.

In the same episode the CBS crew follow around German stormtroopers as they raided people’s houses in the middle of the night and steal their laptops, phones, and other properties, for allegedly posting online things the state does not approve of. What appears to be routine in that country is anathema to the bill of rights in the United States, so-much-so that Americans ought to wonder why their tax-dollars go to defending the Old World from outside enemies when perhaps they should look at the ones within.

We know that the current European establishment is averse to so-called political strongmen, and perhaps rightfully so, but the political weakmen (to coin a term) have proven themselves to be not much better. They appear similar in method and lust for control and power, differing only in rhetoric and style. Vance mentioned that the Romanian courts annulled the election and upended democracy when the populist candidate won, on the premise that Russian misinformation promoted him. Democracy and the free-flow of information becomes a hurdle when their side loses, and never themselves are to blame.

All of this should promote one to wonder: Why are we in NATO? And why are American tax-payer dollars supporting this illiberal order?

A typical example of a political weakman would be German diplomat Christoph Heugsen, in response to Vance:

What is bad about this advice?

The whole premise is bad. Misinformation and “false beliefs” is not a threat, never has been, and their constant wolf-crying only empowers the most powerful governments, institutions, and corporations to seize control of what is true or false. So not only is it a waste of money, their works puts a chilling effect on press and speech freedom all around the world.

They had a hearing the other day, the “Eliminating Waste by the Foreign Aid Bureaucracy”. Journalist Michael Shellenberger testified before the senate that CEPPS is a part of the global censorship complex, basically a deep-state foreign election-meddler.

https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/Testimony-Shellenberger-2025-02-13.pdf

A bipartisan bill was introduced last fall to end the funding of international censorship, using your worthy cause as an example of its worst excesses, when it discussed censorship strategies with the government of Brazil as it went about dissenting voices on Rumble and X.

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/118/hr9850/text

Nice and friendly ancronym s and copy from a website just isn’t enough for me, nor anyone else who can see beyond their own skull.

The latter isn't going to be addressed AT ALL by Trump. He's already said entitlements are off the table. So the couch cushions are pulled, DOGE rearranges some deck chairs more efficiently, and the Titanic steams on.

At any rate, the state will be slimmer and tax-payer dollars should be redirected to cover the cost of those areas.

The war will work out great for Putin and Trump if they manage to divvy Ukraine's assets and leave the locals with nothing. That, is a lack of diplomacy.

How else will they pay back their loans?

This is couch cushion stuff. Politicians who ignore entitlement reform are not serious about debts and deficits. Wouldn't you agree?

This is stuff spent in other countries on boondoggle projects that have nothing to do with the American tax-payer. Entitlements, on the other hand, are designed to benefit the tax-payer. The former needs to be addressed before the latter.

Sides have been engaged, which is a far cry from what Europe and NATO has done. It’s a shame because it appears the Euros just sat around, having expensive summits, and let the war continue. It must be difficult to sit around and watch neighbors die. But hey, at least they have the comforting rhetoric and sabre-rattling to help them sleep at night.

Oh sorry, I mean the United States of America. You are living in Canada, right, so it's not your country.

It’s my country wherever I go, pal. I can still vote if I wanted to. Canada might even be the 51st state.

Jesus. No wonder the country is broke.

US taxpayer dollars were going to be spent on the following items, all which have been cancelled:
- $10M for "Mozambique voluntary medical male circumcision"
- $9.7M for UC Berkeley to develop "a cohort of Cambodian youth with enterprise driven skills"
- $2.3M for "strengthening independent voices in Cambodia"
- $32M to the Prague Civil Society Centre
- $40M for "gender equality and women empowerment hub"
- $14M for "improving public procurement" in Serbia
- $486M to the “Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening,” including $22M for "inclusive and participatory political process" in Moldova and $21M for voter turnout in India
- $29M to "strenghening political landscape in Bangladesh"
- $20M for "fiscal federalism" in Nepal
- $19M for "biodiversity conversation" in Nepal
- $1.5M for "voter confidence" in Liberia
- $14M for "social cohesion" in Mali
- $2.5M for "inclusive democracies in Southern Africa"
- $47M for "improving learning outcomes in Asia"
- $2M to develop "sustainable recycling models" to "increase socio-economic cohesion among marginalized communities of Kosovo Roma, Ashkali, and Egypt"

It’s called diplomacy, a skill European’s seemed to have misplaced. Look how well all the silly war-mongering and war-profiteering has worked out until now.

Or like giving NATO what it wants. Finally some leaders willing to grasp the reality of the situation and compromise.

And that guy has done more to stop the war in his first month than Europe and the previous administration have done in years.

Are you under the impression that his "lesson" was well-received by his "students"?

Not at all. He dressed them down as the enemy within, and their countries as totalitarian shit-holes.

JD Vance schools Europe’s overlords.

Thanks for the breakdown.

That would be true of all borrowing and spending. But it appears the debt to GDP ratio was falling in the decades following the enacting Medicare, so I suppose there are far greater drivers of the debt.

Depends on the entitlement. I think out-of-control and unnecessary spending is the main culprit.

Important and damning info regarding the debt from DOGE. The debt spiral might not be able to be stopped. (It’s nice to see some transparency as opposed to the opaque secrecy the usual suspects prefer and defend.)

I know you like The Washington Post.

Traumatized? Gaslit? How to know if you’re misusing therapy words.

RFK Jr. Confirmed.

Aah yes, manufactured talking points. Projection is one of the biases I was speaking of.