While some of it is straight cash, a lot of it are checks to American arms-makers, who hire American employees, pay American salaries, buy American materials and parts, American stockholders benefit, and (some) American taxes are paid. (Part of why a government budget is not like a household or business budget.)
Everyone does it. The LAV “ambulances” that Canada sends to Ukraine are probably also a subsidy to the London Ontario company that makes them.
At some point in the discussion that followed, one of those present proposed that McCarthyism might be done in, once and for all, by a stroke of McCarthyism. (I am quite sure I remember which one offered, and which others seconded, this proposal, but because of its nature and because might be mistaken, I think I should keep my attributions to myself; but is important to say that the suggestion did not come from the Justice Department.) Concretely, the first man said, through one means and another thick and devastating dossier had been assembled over a number of years, detailing, complete with dates, the hotel rooms in which Joseph McCarthy had stayed and the names of the Senator’s bedmates in all those rooms. The list was practically guaranteed to blow Senator McCarthy’s whole show sky high.
Mr. Truman listened to this presentation and to some supporting statements.
Then the flat of his hand came sharply down on the table. His third person self spoke in outrage; the President wanted no more such talk.
Three pungent comments of Harry Truman’s on the proposal that had just been made have stuck in my mind ever since. This was their gist:
You must not ask the President of the United States to get down in the gutter with a guttersnipe.
Nobody, not even the President of the United States, can approach too close to a skunk, in skunk territory, and expect to get anything out of it except a bad smell.
If you think somebody is telling big lie about you, the only way to answer is with the whole truth. - From “The Truman Way” by John Hersey, who was there in person in 1951. Published in the 8/3/73 edition of the NYTimes. (emphasis mine on the 2nd of the comments)
He did a lot more than drop 2 A-bombs on Japan. These words mean more now than they did back then.
Well you never know, he might actually send them an old tank or some missiles or 155mm shells, like we’ve been sending to Ukraine. We’re kind of in loony land now.
I’m slowly pulling back from panic and despair, trying to prepare myself for the nightmare to come. I’m stuck here- there’s no escape for me, I chose that when I decided to help care for my Dad with advanced Alzheimer’s. Another four years probably would have been enough for him to pass away peacefully and for me to possibly have a chance to escape to a more civilized country. Now I have to worry that his life will end either suffering in poverty and agony because Trump takes away his health care, or outright murdered in his bed by Nazi thugs because they felt like killing someone that day and he’s vulnerable and helpless. I’ll fight against the fascists as hard as I can, but I honestly have no idea how to even prepare.
The hardest thing is the feeling that there are no allies, that it’s the entire country against us and the people with any sense of ethics, decency or compassion are a dying breed. I was semi-prepared for a Trump victory by some kind of trickery, or the Electoral College screwing us over again, but him winning the popular vote has sent me into a despair spiral. The Nazis are the majority. After years and years of people claiming that they’re a crazy fringe group that just has disproportionate influence, turns out no, they are most Americans. And the people who didn’t vote at all are just as bad, maybe even worse. They’re not our allies- they couldn’t even be bothered to fight fascism at the polls, we can’t depend on them to fight it as part of any resistance. They will give in, they will obey in advance, and they will sell us out and betray us without a second thought. We’re surrounded by monsters on all sides.
Lil Bill is pissed off…
the diet garevites
shots fired!
But it looks like Hispanic male voters broke for Trump in a big way, so maybe that explains the win? It seems very odd that no one saw this coming.
Not the least bit surprising to me.
In the 2016 election, I asked my Mexican friend (1st gen immigrant) why he was so excited about Trump and the prospect of him building a wall to keep Mexicans out. Seemed totally the opposite of what I would’ve expected.
His answer was simple: “We came here to get away from people there, we don’t want them moving in next door.”
Another level to it is that Hispanic culture in general trends rather conservative, paternalistic, and religious, compared to the average. Of course individuals do differ, but statistically, I would totally expect the majority Hispanic vote to go Trumpublican.
So “no one saw this coming” seems a little odd to me. Seems like everyone would’ve seen that coming. Unless they don’t know any Hispanic people anyway, or only know progressive ones.
Neither do I, but math is math. And this isn’t obscure, it’s right there on every site that’s posting results.
He also had that tidbit last week, “I know a secret, we have our little secret, I’ll tell you after the election.” Everybody assumed it was some kind of move through Congress, but what if it wasn’t?
Maybe it’s just votes that haven’t been tallied yet?
Pollsters don’t speak spanish?
Maybe, but the quick math I did indicates there might be 6M more votes out of California, 500k out of Oregon, 1.2M out of Washington, and just under 1M in Arizona. That still doesn’t add up.
With expected reporting above and assuming exactly the same number of votes as 2020, we’re still 4 million votes short. With an expected increase in voter participation, call that 5 or 6 million.
One thing I’ve been thinking about is how much tracking there is in the modern era. All of us, no matter how hard we try, have a digital trail now, especially younger generations (younger millennials, Gen Zers). But we all do. We also all know that the social media landscape (in addition to the traditional media) have put their thumbs on the scale of trump, in a variety of ways. And there are very good reasons for that. Unlike the discussions on the progressive side and from the centrists, which lean into understanding what social media has done to modern society (helping to turn it into postmodern society?) via careful studies, discussions, and are interested in at least discussing some sort of regulation of social media… The right, however, saw the nature of social media as an asset and sought out allies who opposed regulation in the industry… they want to keep exploiting our data, and now all the backdoors created by NSA and other intelligence agencies, will be in the hands fascists…
Carol Anderson from over here at Emory…
I would like to point this out again.
Today, where I work, someone was watching Kamala’s concession speech. He exclaimed while laughing “THEY’RE ALL CRYING!” I would assume seeing this moment is one of the primary reasons he voted for Trump.
-edited to correct spelling
I was speaking to a friend this morning via text message. He’s a black guy from London. He emigrated here in the 1990s. His basic reaction to the election was:
“Yeah, of course it’s terrible, it’s the USA. What did you expect? I was mentally prepared for this to happen. And the Democrats had no plans.”
I told him that I wished I could share his detachment.
You forgot misogynistic and at times, racist. Even in many Latino countries, Afro-Latinos don’t get a fair shake and the lighter-skinned folks refuse to confront their own racism.