Don’t think of it as hypocrisy (although it is).
Think of it as rolling coal on a literal, societal level.
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The de-population of all of Ireland over the last couple centuries was pretty extreme, to the point where it was only recently the population returned to a point where it had been in the 1850s, thanks to open immigration policies. If it weren’t for those immigration polices, the “Irish Economic Miracle” would never have happened, and the country absolutely still has enormous need for further population growth via immigration. This dude is spouting the most egregiously ignorant, racist bullshit.
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Just giving away the biggest position of privilege any country has ever had as primus inter pares, eh? Cool, I’m sure there are French or British generals that are just salivating for that position right now.
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In the absence of dispute resolution mechanisms, if one side deliberately violates the agreement, then surely there effectively is no agreement?
Also of course jobs.
Yeah, exactly - there’s already a lot of decaying, uninhabited housing in this country, that happens to be where no one wants to live (anymore) because the jobs left. Sticking more housing in the general area doesn’t help…
They’re not. (Certainly not yet, anyways, though I don’t think they ever will.) What we’ve had is some Republican politicians making performative gestures about supporting Musk, not doing anything to support EVs - from Tesla or anyone else.
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Really? Now he speaks up? Didn’t he create the problem?
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The Freedom Cities Coalition describes the project on its website : “Freedom Cities are a once-in-a-generation opportunity to solve the housing crisis, bring American manufacturing home, and unleash the full potential of American entrepreneurs through the creation of special districts called Prosperity Zones.”
So…they’re just going to build new cities from scratch, and then, somehow, Palpatine returns? I mean manufacturing returns? I have questions. 1) how much will it cost to build a city from scratch? 2) Who’s paying for that? 3) Who’s going to live there? 4) Are they going to essentially be slaves? Forced to live in company housing and work company jobs and shop in company stores? Wait a minute…this has been done before. They were called Company Towns. It didn’t work out so well.
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Helping babies get off to the right start?
But no vaccines because that would be wrong.
Today, under the leadership of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is taking steps to enhance its efforts to ensure the ongoing quality, safety, nutritional adequacy, and resilience of the domestic infant formula supply.
“The FDA will use all resources and authorities at its disposal to make sure infant formula products are safe and wholesome for the families and children who rely on them,” said HHS Secretary Kennedy. “Helping each family and child get off to the right start from birth is critical to our pursuit to Make America Healthy Again.”
The FDA is announcing a set of actions and initiatives focused on infant formula, such as beginning the nutrient review process and increasing testing for heavy metals and other contaminants. The agency is also encouraging companies to develop new infant formulas and clarify opportunities to help inform consumers about formula ingredients. These enhanced FDA commitments are focused on making sure a strong supply of the sole source of nutrition for formula-fed babies and children remains available for one of our nation’s most vulnerable populations.
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That’s going to become even more important as EPA-type regulations are gutted. 
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And it’s not even remotely back to the pre-famine levels, which were around 8 million. It’s still less than that (counting both the republic and Northern Ireland), around 7 million or so.
General population of the island of Ireland over the centuries…
In 1841, the population was about 8.1 and the next census, it 6.5.
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Yup. I’ve asked it as a trivia question from time to time, to get people’s imagination to engage with the scope of the impact and the horror: “When did the Irish population recover to pre-famine levels?” Answer: “It hasn’t yet, over a century and a half later.”
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Yep, a million people dying, another million leaving, and then waves of ex-migration in the subsequent decades due to ongoing colonialism and then having a theocratic government will do that for ya. It seems like Ireland is turning things around now a days, voting in favor of abortion rights and gay marriage, among other things… and shitheads like McGregor would rather drag the country back into the stone age just so he can lord it over others with the backing of the government and church…
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Wow. I had no idea. That’s crazy. Fingers crossed that the United States doesn’t suffer a similar fate over the next four years.
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Yeah, most people (outside of Ireland, I mean) have no idea how bad the famine was and just how hard it hit the country (especially in the western part of the Island). And it was not just a “natural” phenomenon (there’s no such thing as a natural disaster, after all), but it was in large part due to colonial policy. Ireland was a NET exporter of food during the famine, as the British were sending foods to the continent as they struggled with a similar famine caused by the same problems with potatoes (and the government at the time argued it was wrong to intervene in the proper functioning of the market, too). They did things like have work camps where people only got 1000k a day to do hard manual labor, or they’d insist on people keeping up with their rents to landlords, DESPITE not having anything to sell… etc… etc…
The British then deployed similar policies in other colonies, such as India in the… 1880s, I think it was, after a disaster there (I’m blanking on what exactly - check Mike Davis’ booke Late Victorian Holocausts for some of that). Ireland was always a colonial laboratory for the British. Any shitty, violent policy that they rolled out in Africa or in South East Asia or the Middle East, you can bet that they used it first in Ireland. There is a reason why they did not view the Irish as “white” until pretty much the second half of last century - and even then, not always (such as the treatment of Unionists in Northern Ireland during the Troubles).
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Wow, will they attack one of the major manufacturers of Fentanyl, Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers?
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And then there’s Kansas.
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It feels like beyond the whole cruelty is the point thing, there are people who genuinely want things to be miserable. Like of course they’d rather other people be more miserable…but it’s not necessarily a deal breaker. It matters much less who the leopards are eating than that they’re out there, instead of a world where everyone is happy, which is simply not acceptable. You can hear that part clearly in every one of these “moderates” who wonder if we’ve simply gone too far in trying to give a decent life to everyone. I have no idea why.
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That depends on the meaning of “right.”
So he wants to “enhance” what’s already being done, and that includes…
Given this guy’s views on nutrients, who’s gonna protect the public from woo-based supplements and herbal additives? Won’t somebody think of the children whose parents do not want them exposed to “alternative medicine” from infancy?
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