The fact that your government is corrupt is your own fault,
there is no reason for governments to corrupt, when people are vigilant.

Tribes cannot be larger than around 200 people, because that our biological ability to see people as family and extended family.
Then we have a hard time feeling solidarity to one-another, which is what your system needs to want to help your "neighbor".

It's not my principle to have a big powerful government that does everything for everyone, I have a principle of SOLIDARITY. That's the starting point. Why? Because when we have solidarity with each other, it ends or reduces almost every problem of humanity. You don't go to war with people that you think of as your "tribe", you only go to war with other "tribes". It's impossible to change the human nature that limits our feeling of who belongs to our "tribe", so the goal is to extend our tribe through REPRESENTATION. Communities vote on representatives, who share our values and represent our ideals and interests. That's on a local level, the size of at maximum a city. The local communities and their representatives come together regularly and discuss their ideas, and the representative communicates what's happening in the local government and takes responsibility. That's not like your town halls, that I've seen where the "representatives" talk down to their electorate. Recently they fear even coming there, because they are not doing what their constituents have voted them in for. In any case it's a system of several steps, from city, to province, to region, to country. The representatives from the different levels all come together regularly, in the same way that the citizens come together with their direct representative. It communicates up and down (vertical) and between the same levels (horizontal). At every level, there is a maximum of people who can just about have that "tribe" feeling together, from the city level, to the country level, because of that level approach. Very important is that every representative only has the job, as long as they have the support of their "tribe", and gets replaced at a vote's notice. That's the democratic system of government that my party has designed, and it is much different than any other party. There are also gatherings that skip levels, I'm going to a region conference on Saturday, which is for all local representatives and volunteers (just interested citizens) from the municipalities. That's where we meet each other, to get that "tribe" feeling with other provinces. That's how you organize solidarity, between people who normally wouldn't feel solidarity to each other.

Again, we didn't start with an idea of a government, we started with a goal. Many decades of philosophizing, scientific research and discussion has resulted in the policies and organization that the party now conveys. The discussions never stop, we go back to the bare basics every other year and the party program is discussed every year. Every member can propose any change. When they present their reason, the change can be voted in. My local board has changed one detail that we discussed.
I have a plan for something I want to change, next time.

Now you tell me how you want to achieve something for a whole country, when you get your helping neighbors system.

This is what ChatGPT answers.
Q: "is a system of helping each other a viable alternative for a government"

A: "A system of helping each other—often referred to as mutual aid, voluntaryism, or communal self-governance—can provide some of the functions of government, but whether it's a viable alternative to a government entirely depends on the scale, complexity, and goals of the society.

Here's a breakdown:
✅ Where "helping each other" can work well:

Small-scale communities:

In villages, intentional communities, or tribes, mutual aid and consensus-based decision-making often work effectively.

Examples: Indigenous governance systems, kibbutzim in Israel, or some anarchist communes.

Disaster relief or crisis situations:

Grassroots mutual aid often outperforms slow bureaucratic responses (e.g., during Hurricane Katrina or COVID-19).

Non-hierarchical societies:

Communities committed to shared values (e.g., equality, cooperation, sustainability) can sustain systems without a formal government.

❌ Where it struggles as a full replacement:

Large-scale coordination:

Infrastructure (roads, utilities, defense) requires long-term planning, resource pooling, and enforcement—hard to do through informal cooperation.

Inequality and free riders:

Without formal enforcement, people may take advantage of the system or avoid contributing, which undermines stability.

Dispute resolution and justice:

Governments typically offer courts and legal systems. Voluntary systems may lack consistent, fair enforcement.

Security and defense:

Organizing collective defense or policing without coercion or hierarchy is extremely difficult at scale.

🧠 Viable in theory, but in practice…

Philosophies like anarchism, libertarian socialism, and communitarianism envision societies run entirely on mutual aid and voluntary cooperation.

Real-world attempts (e.g., Rojava in Syria, Zapatista territories in Mexico, 1930s Catalonia) show both the promise and limits of these models.

🔄 Hybrid models may be more realistic

Many governments already rely partly on civil society and mutual aid:

Volunteer fire departments

Food banks

Local co-ops

These systems complement, rather than replace, formal government.
Summary:

Viable in small, aligned communities or as a complementary system.

Challenging to scale as a complete replacement for government functions in large, diverse, modern societies.

Would you like to explore historical examples or philosophical frameworks behind this idea?"

=================================================================

So, it can work for "Small-scale communities".
That's the 200 people that I was talking about.
Are you going to divide up the country in small-scale communities?
What are you going to do when a hurricane flattens your whole community?
Is another community going to help you? Why? How?
If you have a poor community, will you move to a rich community?
Is there trade happening between those communities?

IT DOESN'T WORK!

A government is a collection of communities that is organized to share risks
and resources. It solves all the problems that a collection of communities causes.

That's because it's a business that makes lots of profit.
It would be cheaper if your neighbors would help you, but you can't rely on it. It's dependent on you having neighbors that CAN help you, even if they wanted to help you. What happens if the whole block burns down in a big fire? Are the neighbors from the next block coming to help? Do they have the money and time to help all those people rebuild your block of houses? It doesn't work.

Here's my alternative: the whole country just pays into a system that helps people, when a tree falls on their house or their house burns down. No profit, no complicated system to get your damage repaired or your house rebuilt, just one guy comes to look at the damage and signs off on what is needed. The order is picked up by a licensed contractor in the neighborhood and the job is done, by licensed workers. We have some independent specialists checking that the job is done well, for an honest price. There is no one who doesn't contribute to this direct system making billions of profit.
It cheap, efficient and you're not dependent on the charity of neighbors.

I don't 'love' any phone, but I am content with my Samsung A53.
It has a pretty good camera, which is handy to always have around.
It's the first smartphone I ever bought for myself.
All the ones before it were hand-me-downs from my girlfriend.
It's the first time I have a subscription, rather than prepaid too.

ChatGPT works greater. Why would I need to chose the one owned by a fascist?
I have a good reason to hate him; he's a fascist. I think fascism is evil and I hate evil.
What's the reason to stop hating him?

Most techies say that ChatGPT is better than Grok.
They also say that Google Gemini is the best free ChatGPT alternative. I might try that.

Any opinions on the actual subject?

You didn't let him off the hook, you tried to hang him from it for years.
THERE WAS JUST NOTHING THERE!!!!

Now you have the most corrupt president in American history,
but you completely refuse to see it, because he's your guy.

No, I am depending on a government to do what I AM NOT ABLE TO DO
as an individual.

Do you think that "giving your neighbor next door a few tomatoes to feed his family",
is the solution for what you called "we are weak as a nation and as a world"?

You are referring to small things like "come over and help cut a storm damaged tree
from your house". How did civilization fix that problem? INSURANCE!
We all set aside some money, for the unlucky person who needs it. Right?
You can do that in your neighborhood, in your city or your state, or your country.
Instead, you turned it into a business. Why? How is that "helping each other"?
How are you going to help someone who has cancer? Why do you let them care
for themselves? What's the difference with the tree on their roof?

Of course helping your neighbor doesn't require a government.
Now ask Grok if a system where we all help each other is a working alternative
for a government. I'm interested in the result.

I'm moving a discussion over here, because it has turned into politics (again).

Phart said: "I feel like we are weak as a nation and as a world because instead of helping the next door neighbor,and they help theirs and it be a large circle that comes back around. we fly over, drive past , float past our neighors to help someone way away. which allows our home countries to suffer.
help the person next to you, they can then help their neighbor. the idea would work, just give it a chance"

ABOUT THAT LAST SENTENCE:

You're literally describing what my Socialist Party is doing.
And what do you want to achieve that way? What do you have a government for?

You want to make the government to be as SMALL as possible, right?
And then do what the government did before, by helping each other?

WHY?

WHY not organize that?

The result is; the exact type of socialism that my party is fighting for.
A bottom up, grass roots, fully democratic, people cooperation, AKA SOCIALISM.

Think about it, how do you plan to do that "helping each other" method with 330 million people? Are you all going to sit in a great hall, discussing who needs to help who? Or, are you going to pick a few people who organize things? How do you pick those people? WHO picks those people? Are you going to vote for them?
Does this sound like a structure you might recognize? It's going to look a lot like a democratically elected government, isn't it? How will you prevent that some people favor their friends at the detriment of other people? As soon as your "helping each other" method gets big enough to mean a damn, you're running into the same problems as before.
What are you going to do then? Pick another billionaire narcissist leader, who doesn't
give a crap about helping anyone? You're back where you started.

The government was a result of tribes getting larger. Your people helping people method is only feasible with at maximum 200 people. As soon as civilization created bigger tribes, they started creating governments. Civilization has tried almost every form of government that is possible. The form that respects its people the most is democracy. It's not as efficient as an autocracy, but it is more sustainable, because most people don't like to be ruled over or horribly murdered when they don't agree with the people who are running it. That's why I support democracy. However, when the government gives away all the power to a few wealthy people, it's not a democracy anymore. That's what's happened in the US. You're solution is to turn it into an autocracy, my solution is the exact opposite. Ownership = power, so I want to eliminate the system where ownership, that we all depend on, is in the hands of the few. It should be publicly owned and democratically controlled. That's not easy to achieve, but that's the goal of socialism.

I asked ChatGPT to explain it. If you don't consider ChatGPT neutral, ask Elon Musk's AI, I'm boycotting it.

U.S. inflation has been declining in early 2025, with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rising 2.3% year-over-year in April—the slowest pace since February 2021. Several factors contribute to this trend:

- Preemptive Stockpiling by Businesses: Anticipating new tariffs, many companies increased imports earlier in the year, creating inventory buffers that delayed price increases for consumers.

- Temporary Tariff Reductions: A short-term U.S.-China agreement reduced tariffs from 145% to 30% for 90 days, easing immediate inflationary pressures.

- Decline in Energy Prices: A significant drop in gasoline prices contributed to the overall slowdown in inflation.

- Federal Reserve's Monetary Policy: The Fed's interest rate hikes have helped cool demand, aligning inflation closer to its 2% target.

However, this moderation may be temporary. As stockpiled goods are sold off, the effects of tariffs could lead to price increases in sectors like electronics, autos, and apparel. Analysts predict that inflationary impacts may become more evident in the coming months.

Since you praised Trump for the oil price going down, I asked that too:
"Is Trump to be commended for bringing oil prices down?"

It's a nuanced situation. While oil prices have dropped, attributing that directly to former President Donald Trump is not straightforward. Here’s why:
🔍 What’s Actually Causing Oil Prices to Fall?

Global Market Forces:

Oil prices are largely driven by global supply and demand, not individual national policies.

In 2025, increased production from non-OPEC countries and softer global demand (especially from China) have put downward pressure on prices.

U.S. Domestic Production:

The U.S. remains a major oil producer, and recent increases in shale production have contributed to supply levels.

Some of this momentum was built under multiple administrations, including investments and deregulations during Trump’s previous term (2017–2021), but the direct link to 2025 prices is limited.

Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) Releases:

If the government released oil from the SPR (a decision sometimes made to ease fuel prices), it could impact prices temporarily. However, there’s no solid reporting indicating Trump has enacted this in 2025.

Geopolitical Stability:

Prices sometimes drop due to reduced risk premiums, especially if global tensions ease or major conflicts affecting oil supply settle.

✅ So, Should Trump Be Commended?

If specific Trump policies (e.g., promoting drilling, negotiating trade that eases energy prices, or increasing refinery capacity) directly led to more supply or lower demand, then partial credit might be warranted. But:

No major policy move in 2025 is directly and clearly tied to this price drop, based on current reporting.

Oil prices fluctuate for reasons mostly beyond any single president’s control.

=================================================================

So, your lowering inflation is mostly a result of TRUMP BACKING DOWN.
As soon as his madness continues, you can see your inflation increase steeply.

ADDITIONALLY, Trump demanded the Fed to lower the interest rates and they didn't listen
to him. So, instead of thanking Trump, you should thank the Fed!!!

You're showing exactly the mental gymnastics that you guys are doing,
to make yourself believe that the Democrats are more corrupt.

Giving Trump a pass, is DEFINITELY NOT going to reduce corruption.
Who do you want him to work for, YOU or whoever gives him MONEY?

What if the EU gives Trump a $500 million, to keep sending Ukraine weapons?
If you agree with that open corruption, we can do that....
Do you think that's how politics should work?

Don't ask me, ask Donald J. Trump. I wasn't in the meetings.
Or ask his loyal staffers, who are angry about it. They might know.

You don't ask what Burisma got from Biden, while you couldn't even prove
he got one cent from them. Hunter's job was all you needed to say: "CORRUPTION!". However, Joe Biden didn't even have a position of power
back then, that he could use to 'reward' Burisma.

It's not that there are no options for Qatar to 'reward' Trump for their 'present',
it is that there are TOO MANY, to point it down.

One article points to " intricate nexus of business deals that Eric Trump is creating at lightning speed through the Gulf region. The first foreign deal secured by the Trump Organization since Trump’s return to the Oval Office in January is in Qatar."

"The deal is for the construction of a luxury resort and 18-hole golf course outside the Qatari capital, Doha. It will be known as the Trump International Golf Club & Villas. That would appear to be a breach of Trump’s second-term promise – already so much weaker than the ethical pledges he made in Trump presidency 1.0 – that the family business would pursue no deals involving foreign governments."

"Were that not enough, there’s also the crypto factor. Trump’s venture into the crypto currency business is another whole can of worms, with so many ethical conundrums attached to it that it would keep a conflict of interest investigator busy for years.
Where are the Trump family’s biggest crypto deals located? In the GULF STATES."

"A fund run by the royal family of UAE recently invested $2bn in a crypto exchange. The fund channeled the money through a new cryptocurrency known as stablecoin that tracks the US dollar.

The stablecoin was issued by a cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial.
It is owned by the Trump family.

The front page of World Liberty Financial’s website invites visitors to “meet our team, the passionate minds shaping the future of finance”. Under a beaming photograph of the 47th president are the words: “Donald J Trump, chief crypto advocate”."

MORE CHANCES FOR QUID PRO QUO THAN I'VE EVER SEEN!

Come on, Trump is breaking every record on corruption.
How did Elon prove that? By literally buying people's votes?

Which Democrat ever sold Chinese watches for $100,000 per piece, so billionaires and foreign leaders can easily bribe him, by buying a couple or a crate of watches from him.

Which Democrat ever created an NFT and other crypto scams, so people can send him unlimited amounts of untraceable money, and show him the receipts, when they visit him in Mar-a-Lago, during in-transparent meetings?

Which Democrat have ever asked someone how many of their ETF's they have bought from them, when they are applying for a job?

Which Democrat has ever accepted a Boeing 747 from Qatar?

Which Democrat has multiple golf clubs, where billionaires and foreign leaders
pay $700,000/year?

Which Democrat asked the Supreme Court to make them immune from the law?

Here's where your wrong: we should only start to cooperate AFTER we we get our own lives, our own homes and etc in order, because then we NEVER will. Cooperation IS the process that we use to achieve goals, like getting our own lives, our own homes and etc in order. Have you built your own house, sourced all the materials to build it yourself? I am sure you didn't. That's because people built civilization. The more people that were added to civilization, the better it functioned.

You became weaker as a country, when you reduced cooperation.
You had your prime in the 50s to 80s; you HAD your own lives, your own homes
and etc in order. BUT, then your culture flipped to selfishness.
You let big companies outsource most of your jobs to other countries,
because you allowed selfish people to make more money that way.

You are told that other countries caused your decline, but it was selfishness.
It's not just internalized into your culture as a virtue, but also institutionalized,
it's in your government, media and economy.
What's the death of cooperation? -> selfishness

Thanks for admitting that it's corruption. Phart couldn't do that.

Do you like that corruption or do you want to see it reduced?

Here is a challenge to the ones who disagree with Tim Walz;
Prove him wrong, without personal attacks.
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It's the exact opposite. Private companies hire less qualified people to do a job,
TO SAVE AND MAKE MORE MONEY.

Sri Lanka has one of the highest road traffic fatality rates in South Asia. According to the World Health Organization, the country records approximately 3,000 road traffic deaths annually.

When comparing accident rates per kilometers traveled, privately owned buses in Sri Lanka exhibit higher fatality rates than publicly owned buses operated by the Sri Lanka Transport Board (SLTB).
- Private Buses: 0.31 fatalities
- SLTB (Public) Buses: 0.14 fatalities

This indicates that private buses had more than double the fatality rate per kilometer compared to public buses.

Several factors contribute to the higher accident rates of private buses:
- Driver Behavior: Private bus drivers often engage in aggressive driving practices,
such as illegal overtaking and picking up passengers outside designated stops.
- Working Conditions: Studies indicate that poor working conditions, including long hours and low pay, are associated with higher crash rates among private bus drivers.
- Vehicle Maintenance: Private buses may not adhere to the same maintenance standards as public buses, leading to a higher likelihood of mechanical failures

Did YOU not research this topic enough, because you just want your BIAS confirmed?
Or did this article inform you incorrectly, because they want you to have that BIAS?


Another good example is your Air Traffic Controllers. The ones hired directly by the government are of the better or best quality. The ones that are outsourced through a private company are very much inferior. That's what has been causing the crashes, incidents and near incidents lately.
We discussed that topic not so long ago. I even shared this letter:

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them
are stupider than that.” - George Carlin -
And he was talking about adults.

"these cops didn't have a agenda I guess"
ONE 'protester' died, while a huge crazed mob violently attacked the capital police, injuring at least 174 law enforcement officers. If those cops had "an agenda" giving them a reason to kill those protesters, they could have killed a lot more of them, than ONE.

The fact that YOUR cops only shot ONE person that day, shows me that their "agenda" agreed with YOURS.

Phart, you keep evading the issue: Trump taking a gift worth $400 million from Qatar should be considered a BRIBE. Even Trump's own, most loyal White house staffers
see a corruption issue in it. Why can't you acknowledge that?

Under Trump, your country is arresting people for saying Israel is doing a genocide. Why are you not calling that out as a slippery slope?

There is no law against criticizing Israel, but there are laws against directly threatening specific people with violence or death.

It's not just the UK where threatening other people with bodily harm or death
is illegal, it is illegal in the US too.

Every state in the U.S. has laws that prohibit threats of violence between citizens. Many states use terms like:
- "Criminal threats"
- "Terroristic threats"
- "Menacing"
- "Assault" (in some states, words alone can constitute assault)

These laws generally prohibit:
- Threatening to cause bodily harm or death
- Doing so in a way that puts the victim in reasonable fear
- Often requiring that the threat be intentional and specific

Should I care more about "china, out of control of anyone", than Climate Change?
I worry more about America, out of control of anyone.

There are people protesting the actions of China and America too,
but it isn't such a clear problem, with such clear solutions, which clearly isn't addressed enough.
It's nowhere near an "obvious lost cause", it's JUST a political choice.

One individual cannot nearly achieve anything important on her goals, by just working a good paying job creating alternative energy. It's very much debatable
if joining Extinction Rebellion does ANYTHING AT ALL, but she's pretty famous
and is inspiring people. She's also angering lots of people, so I don't know if she's
a net positive, but she's aspiring to be better than just a angry teen. I think she understands that. That's obviously why she's pursuing the bachelor's degree in Global Development. She already has fame, if she combines it with actual skills,
she might very well be that net positive.

Some people are born to lead, others are born to follow. She wants to lead.
Why don't you ask your "leaders" why they do what they do?
Is it maybe because you understand that they're only serving themselves?

The cops didn't kill them? Oh, I see, they were white and had a real gun.

Busses owned by private companies never drive of cliffs, that is true.

I'm not really a liberal on all issues, but a socialist. However, YES, I want electric cars.
Or, more accurately, I think we need electric cars. It's not top priority, but important.

I know that lithium mining is damaging to the environment. There are lots of other problems associated with the production of batteries. Those are the downsides of electric cars. However, for as much as I can oversee, the upsides outweigh the downsides.
Worse destruction of nature has been inflicted for the extraction of fossil fuels. Huge parts of Canadian forests are being destroyed for tar sands, Germany is digging even larger pits in the ground for lignite, oil spills are poisoning whole peoples in Africa, the Deepwater Horizon disaster of 2010 released approximately 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over 87 days, many oil tankers leaked oil over almost every beach in the world for decades, fracking is poisoning your tap-water, Texans can hardly walk outside without risking cancer from the air-pollution, NOT TO MENTION CLIMATE CHANGE.

Lithium mining is not threatening the lives of billions of people living around the equator, in the near future, climate change is. Besides, lithium is probably only a temporary resource needed for batteries. Sodium-ion batteries are expected to be mainstream around 2030.

There is no double standard; climate change is not just your standard type of pollution,
it is a much more urgent problem. Still, cars are only 7-8% of the problem.
It's just a very popular problem, because we all love the freedom of personal transport.

Energy production: ~40% of global CO2 emissions
Industry: ~20% of global CO2 emissions
Agriculture, Forestry & Land Use: ~18% of global CO2 emissions
Transport: ~15% of global CO2 emissions
Buildings: ~6% of global CO2 emissions
Waste: ~1–3% of global CO2 emissions

Are you aware that you put 100% of responsibility on individuals an 0%
responsibility on civilization? Do you think we even have a civilization or
are we just a collection of individuals, with NO responsibility to one-another?

Trump just had streamer Hasan Piker detained. Let's compare the 2 situations.
Who are you referring to, when you say "the brits put people in jail over facebook post"?

If it's the case that leopoldij is talking about, incitement is not protected free speech.

Is Hasan Piker accused of incitement, or are they just intimidating him, because he is criticizing Trump, which IS protected free speech?

Making EUROPE Great Again
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A hindrance to what society? The one that is destroying itself?
There is no future in supporting that society.

She can be a little cog in the grinding machine, or she can try to make a difference.
I think she's making a courageous choice.

True, she might be sacrificing her own prosperity, in the goal of preventing
climate catastrophe, and great suffering for many people.

What is the definition of courage, in your opinion?
Isn't it something like; sacrificing, and doing something hard, for a good cause?

Of course, he is doing the best he can, for himself.
WE, are not doing the best for him.

After a century of domination from 'The West' that Indian boy is still poor as hell. We prioritized our wealth over relieving his horrible poverty. We let billionaires exploit them, for a fantasy that capitalism is best to eliminate poverty. Now China shows that to be wrong. They don't trust billionaires to invest into people's progress, they have a government that invests. Their growth has been much higher for many decades now and they pulled a billion people out of poverty like that. That's why they made their own alliance: BRICS. That's an alliance of 60% of the people in the world. Those people all saw 'The West' fail them and now they see China pass us to be the new superpower.

The EU might learn from it and do better, The US showed that you didn't learn anything, and thinks that even worse dehumanizing capitalism is going to prevent their empire crumbling. The West held on to their power a long time, but there is an alternative power now, and they promise to take better care of boys like that. It might be a lie, but don't blame people for trying something else, when we have not delivered.

She is probably not going to be rich from it.
Some people care about other things than money.

Besides the sad fact that he is not in school, but working, he's doing a good job.
Another $0.05 well earned.

69 Is pretty young for a pope. I guess you got your wish.
I think that's as young as you can expect popes to be.
It's not advantageous to the church to elect younger ones.
They get so much attention any time one dies and a new one is elected.

The new pope is already causing MAGA outrage. They don't like him much. lol

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Any honest pope wouldn't like MAGA, because they are anti-Jesus.

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She's part of climate protests, with Extinction Rebellion.
They are getting arrested almost every time.
She's doing exactly what she professed to believe in.
If she had quit her cause, you would call her a sell-out.
Instead she shows that she's committed, which you don't like.

On 9 June 2023, Thunberg graduated from high school. In 2023, the University of British Columbia awarded her an honorary Doctor of Laws degree, and the University of Helsinki conferred upon her an honorary Doctorate of Theology.
She is currently enrolled at Stockholm University, pursuing a bachelor's degree in Global Development.

She is doing exactly one of your options; continue her education.
And she didn't pick a subject that would discredit her convictions.
She obviously wants to be a global protest leader for climate action.
A few arrests during protests on her rйsumй is not a problem for that career.

Since when is the effort to save humanity not "something productive"?

22% of Americans are doing jobs that they self describe as meaningless.
Go talk to them.

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I have tried Mountain Dew (Citrus Blast) once. For what I can remember it was nice, but it didn't impress me enough to buy it again. No reason for you to boycott it, as far as I can find. The only controversies they have been in were related to accusations of racial stereotypes regarding African Americans and trivialized violence against women, the opposite of "woke". So you are in the clear there.

I hope for you that Duke's Mayo won't go woke. The owner, Sauer Brands Inc.,
in Greenville, was recently sold to a Advent International, a northern firm.
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They make a damn woke first impression. Just saying.

How about you tell us beforehand what you would want out of such a deal,
instead of you telling us how great it is, afterwards?

This former DOGE staffer explains that on day one they were told to cancel every payment that Elon Musk didn't like, and that it was fully ideological in nature and had nothing to do with waste, fraud and abuse. The unconstitutionally cancelled payments that were constitutionally signed off on.

That supports the conclusion that DOGE didn't just break the law, but that they are traitors to The Constitution.

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Another whistle-blower telling on your crime lords.

In most jurisdictions in the United States, proving premeditation is required to convict someone of first-degree murder. First-degree murder is typically defined as a willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing. Here's what that means legally:
- Willful: The person intended to kill.
- Deliberate: The person made a clear decision to kill, not in the heat of the moment.
- Premeditated: The person planned or thought about the killing before doing it — even if only briefly.

There is video evidence of him sitting on his neck for 9 minutes and 29 second.
I wouldn't call it "premeditated" after a minute, but when he continued that long,
while people are warning him that he was killing Floyd, I think that applies to "premeditated". Note the "even if only briefly" part.

You are forgetting that it was never proven that George Floyd actually used
that fake $20 bill, and certainly not that he INTENDED to use a fake $20 bill.
"The bill was reportedly marked as counterfeit by store employees, but there was
no trial or forensic evidence presented to prove whether the bill was actually fake —
or whether Floyd knew it was."
It was just an allegation.

Cooperation isn't "helping". It's the idea that 1 + 1 = 3.
(It's not math, it's economics)

However, cooperation can only work, if both parties strive towards
similar goals. Otherwise it turns into -1 + 1 = 0.

Luckily, I'm still living in my socialist utopia, The Netherlands,
but you're raining on my parade.

Are you deporting people to fight for Putin already?
I knew you were Putin's bitch, but I didn't imagine it this bad.

He didn't understand tariffs so he asked people who didn't understand them either
to think of a formula. His whole administration is evidence of him not being able to put together a team of people who know anything. The only thing they know is what serves them and how to suck up to Trump.

Did your eyesight deteriorate, or do you just need the right glasses?
Sometimes opticians only measure your visual impairment for distance and not
for close up, which can differ a lot. I have 4 glasses, all with different focal lengths, which I switch depending on the job I'm doing.

He sounds like a woke liberal. You'll probably hate him soon enough.

No captain of industry is g@mbling hundreds of billions of dollars and an effort of many years, to bring back production to the US, where that production will be more expensive, on the fickle nature of Trump, who could die from his fat heart any day, and who can become a lame duck in the next election. Trump has already caved on his tariffs, and he calls it a negotiation tactic regularly. It's putting the economy on a ledge, so they are all JUST WAITING to see what he's going to do. It's NOT working!

I'm not saying that is CANNOT work, I'm just saying that Trump is to dumb
and unreliable to make it work.
--------------------------------------- added after 35 hours

That was fast!

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Do you know how many HUNDREDS of billions in trade relations Trump has gambled, for this itty bitty deal with the UK? The whole world is rethinking being dependent on the US for anything critical, because they cannot trust you anymore. Maybe you don't know this, but I hear discussions regularly about the EU taking a distance from your intelligence agencies, not depending anymore on Google, Microsoft and other cloud services, your weapons manufacturers, the dollar, Wall Street, Boeing, LNG, the F-35 and your pharmaceutical industry. Do we still respect the sanctions that the US enforced on everyone else?
You might have a point that we didn't spend enough on our defense, but everything we did spend was ON YOUR WEAPONS. Now we are putting maximum effort and hundreds of billions of investments in making those weapons in Europe, because we cannot trust you to provide them anymore.
Selling some more produce to UK is peanuts compared to the damage that
Trump has done.

In his first term, Trump already showed the rest of the world, that the US cannot be trusted to keep an agreement, by pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, the Iran Nuclear Deal, TPP, the INF Treaty, the UNHRC, UNESCO, the Global Compact for Migration, the Open Skies Treaty, the WHO, and he undermined the World Trade Organization.

He has squandered every last bit of trust that other countries had in the US.
No one has any reason to believe that the US will respect ANY deal, ever again, so why would the UK or Europe respect a deal with the US?
Remember that trade deal Trump made with China, during his first trade war? China promised to buy more soy products from the US. That never happened!
That 'historic trade deal with the UK' is as valuable as the paper it's printed on.

It's not just folks like me that hate Trump, it's everyone he ever did business with, it's almost everyone in his first administration, it's his former VP, most of his former lawyers who saw their careers tank, it's old people who donated to him once and found out the money keeps getting transferred periodically, it's everyone who once was loyal as a dog to him and he threw under the bus. Everyone who deals with him ends up regretting it, except you dumb-asses,
SO FAR!

Those government leaders that Trump thinks are groveling for him, are all much smarter than him. They stroke his ego, give him some peanuts, to keep the US on our side in the Ukraine/Russia conflict, for as long as we still need you to. But we are going all in to get our military production and capacity up. And when we don't need you for our protection anymore, we might not want to need you for ANYTHING anymore. America had it's best days as superpower and is flailing, we don't want China to be the new superpower, so the best solution is
to become one ourselves. Europe has 745 million people, much lower debt than the US, a highly educated workforce, innovation strength and has a good reputation with most countries in the world.

Nope, Covid screwed it up. First demand completely collapsed, forcing oil companies to stop production and taking big losses. We had a negative oil price for a while. Then demand returned, and the oil companies kept the production low, to increase the oil prices and recover their losses. We are still in post-covid over-consumption of oil right now, but Trump's tariffs have slowed the economic growth and production, lowering the demand for oil. Many producers are waiting for Trump's next move. They fear more tariffs, so they are minimizing product stock. Less production, means less demand for oil, means lower prices.
You're just celebrating the beginning of an economic crisis.

It doesn't have to come though. If Trump promises to stop his tariff plans,
the economy will probably go up again.

As a Dutch socialist, I'm almost obligated to read his books, but it's probably not happening. It has been a while since I picked up a book. There is one on my nightstand, that I read halfway and stopped at least a year ago. It was a book that I would really like to finish, but lately I just listen to YouTube on my tablet, before I go to sleep. I cannot find the time and patience during the day to read.

I did watch/listen to several YouTube videos, where he explains his ideas.

Somehow, I don't think Trump reads a lot either.

What were you doing? Collecting roadkill?

Ho there, it's not just Doritos, but all Frito-Lay products, be consistent.

Well, at least you were way ahead of them.

I buy the real Doritos maybe 3 times per year.
I liked the concept of Doritos Roulette. We had that a few times.
Unfortunately the hot ones weren't really that hot.
I think Doritos Flamin' Hot has a whole bag of those hot ones
and I eat those like they are paprika chips.

That sounds like a case where I would support starting a lawsuit too.
But, is that an argument for not agreeing with this lawsuit?

He was claiming that he could not breath, because the cop crushed his neck.
At least you now agree that it was murder of the first degree, while you previously blamed the victim, so we are making progress.

I agree that the Jan 6th cop is a murderer, but by your standards it was self defense.
You think just not following the orders of a cop is justification enough for him to shoot. Well, she didn't follow his orders. And it wasn't just the unarmed woman that was threatening them, but the whole crazed mob that stood behind her, ready to follow.
I don't know why you emphasize that she was white, because more than 90% of that mob was white. You're just showing that you think that it's a crime when a black cop shoots a white civilian and that it's self defense when a white cop shoots a black civilian.

Yes, she was defenseless as a child. Remember how you defended the cops,
when a mob of cops shot AN ACTUAL CHILD 60 TIMES?
Did any of those cops go to jail for that?

There are 15 democracies with kings.
There are 8 dictatorships with kings.

There are 120 democracies with presidents.
There are 60 dictatorships with presidents.

That's about the same ratio of democracies vs dictatorships.

By 2020 numbers, the top 5 most democratic countries were:
#1 Denmark: king
#2 Norway: king
#3 Finland: president
#4 Sweden: king
#5 Germany: president
Those kings serve a ceremonial role with limited or no political power.

The UK ranked as #17 most democratic country (Working Democracy)
The US ranked as #36 most democratic country (Deficient Democracy)
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In 2025, the US was demoted to "Flawed Democracy".
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That was just after Elon Musk meddled in the presidential campaign.

I cannot find any more recent assessments of America's democracy,
but we can expect it to drop like a rock.

Your gas prices were at the lowest in december 2024.
Did you thank Biden then?

The fact that you even have to ask...
Trump has an impact on EVERYTHING. Ever heard of tariffs or Ukraine?

I told you that before: your country leads the way in the global economy. What you decide in your elections affects everyone else. When the US elects liberals who make the oligarchs pay the working class better, make the pharmaceutical companies lower their prices, invest in green energy to reduce climate change, make education more affordable, regulate big industry to pollute less and provide safe working environments, crack down on the finance industry to stop scamming customers, etc., that results in the EU doing similar things or better. When you pick Republicans, who only prop up billionaires and fuck over the working class, the EU follows that example more.

Your country is now turning full fascist. If you know any history, you would understand how that could turn out. In WWII those fuckers didn't have nukes.
You do!!

You claimed Trumpp was the anti-war candidate, but he is threatening Iran,
Mexico, Canada, Panama and Greenland and is actively involved in the genocide in Palestine and bombing Yemen for their reaction on that.
He's being directly aggressive to everyone except Russia.
Nothing but love for Putin, and thinking of quitting the aid to Ukraine.
That means that Europe needs to defend Ukraine by ourselves.
Why? Because we are next on Putin's to-do-list.

Why oh why would I be so interested in American politics??
Don't you think your question is a little bit silly???