I just read a Christopher Hitchens essay "Blood for no oil!". It's mostly a very poor attempt to pretend he's anything other than an unapologetic neocon warmonger who is disgusted that the liberal consensus "lacks spine and sinew". That's something he could easily have lifted from William F. Buckley. He also gets into the jihadi attack on Western Civilization. It feels clear that the entirety of the anti-Islam movement, when not open racism, is very thinly disguised tribalism and if not nationalism/patriotism, then a semi-international version of it encompassing The West. That's not to say "Western Values" as it pretends, but "The West" simply as a tribal identification or fandom.

Welllll if the USA lost the Revolutionary War, then you could make a pretty good argument that a lot of the states in the north east would be part of Canada now (if not all of them). So if NJ was one of those then yeah, I'd say Canada could well have won the nuclear race.

The rest of the U.S. that still believes in liberal democracy should ally up with France and other countries that believe in liberal democracy and take on this Trump-Putin monstrosity.


https://twitter.com/jimsciutto/statu...51878054096898

Putin Trump meeting turning out being the entire ****ing day isn't a surprise everybody.

Some of Canada's (and Britain's, among others) best and brightest mathematicians, physicists, scientists etc. were involved in the Manhattan Project. We weren't sitting on the sidelines. My point? Mmmm, not sure, probably just general defensiveness at the suggestion that the US did it alone. You needed our natural, and human resources to get there. Afaict a nuclear armed US meant a nuclear armed North America.

I don't really agree with the framing here where "Western values" are the Enlightenment or progressivism and so the Trumpist view of Western civilization is just a made-up yarn. Christianity and ethnic, racial, and national identities seem to me a central part of the history of Western civilization, including most definitely its expansion. During the Cold War and with the increasing rise of globalization, these ideas lost some of their power because they were less universally appealing than capitalism and liberalism, but pretty clearly they still speak to lots of people.

I predict that if he does find something Trump insta-fires him and faces zero consequences for it.

Lol canadians

Finally an argument that makes sense.

I'm sure Canada, which had about 11 million people total when WW2 started, punched over its weight.

We often do.

Putin Trump meeting going on over 2 hours. Pee pee video?

2+ hours for a guy with a 9 second attention span seems not at all fishy

Putin's got him in a headlock and won't let go until he agrees to hand over the keys to air force one.

It should be fine, Trump's staff broke up the talking points for his meeting with Putin into tweet-sized chunks.

Right, but that's what the racism is for.

I thought UBI was actually pretty popular.

putin is playing his usual headgames. after the first 5 minutes he excused himself to "go pee pee", which disturbed trump visibly and putin hasn't chosen to return yet

Microchip adjustments.

Trump is getting worked. It won't just be lifting sanctions. Trump will end up building pipelines to Western Europe for Putin.

It is a systematic problem that can be solved but is unlikely to be solved. Most congressmen have to spend a awful lot of time to raise money for elections. The barrier you have to cross to win elections is to collect enough money to finance your campaign. The people who can effort to take out their check book and spend $5000 (the average for donations) is the group we would label as the 1%. So mostly white male business owners and executives who have political preferences who aren't hard to guess. Less tax, less regulation, more subventions for business.


So no matter what you ideology is, as a politician you have to represent the needs of those who pay for your reelection. This is the reason why business interest comes before the will of the voters almost every time and certain problems remain unsolved. Gun regulation or fixing the prison system do have huge public support, yet no politician touches it.

It´s perfectly legal corruption.

Not sure Putin would have to excuse himself for that; it might be part of the head game.

of course putin was going to drag out the meeting knowing trump's attention span lasts about the length of a handshake. now putin can get him to offer up whatever he wants because trump is too stupid to no better and tillerson is literally a friend of russia

Maybe Trump defected? The pressure is getting too close at home, and they had to pull him out.

Starting a grip fight with a Judoka, that's surely going to end well for Trump's ego.