hedda_foil
hedda_foil's JournalAmerica vs.The World
The Atlantic (paywalled)https://archive.ph/QjJw5
[snip]
Americans are entering the most dangerous world they have known since World War II, one that will make the Cold War look like child’s play and the post–Cold War world like paradise. In fact, this new world will look a lot like the world prior to 1945, with multiple great powers and metastasizing competition and conflict. The U.S. will have no reliable friends or allies and will have to depend entirely on its own strength to survive and prosper. This will require more military spending, not less, because the open access to overseas resources, markets, and strategic bases that Americans have enjoyed will no longer come as a benefit of the country’s alliances. Instead, they will have to be contested and defended against other great powers.
[snip]
No country had ever before played the role that the traditionally aloof United States took on after 1945. That is partly because no other power had enjoyed America’s unique circumstances—¬largely in¬vulnerable to foreign invasion, because of its strength and its distance from the other great powers, and thus able to deploy force thousands of miles from home without leaving itself at risk. This combination of geography and reach allowed the United States after World War II to bring peace and security to Europe and East Asia. Nations scarred by war poured their energies into becoming economic powerhouses. That made global prosperity and international cooperation possible.
[snip]
All of that is now ending. Trump has openly celebrated the end of the grand bargain. His administration has told Europeans to be ready to take over their own defense by 2027 and suggested that allies and strategic partners, including Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, should pay the United States for protection. Trump has launched aggressive tariff wars against virtually all of America’s allies. He has waged ideological and political warfare against European governments and explicitly threatened territorial aggression against two NATO allies, Canada and Denmark.
[snip]
The consequence of a newly unreliable and even hostile United States, therefore, will likely be significant military buildups by former allies. This will not mean sharing the burden of collective security, because these rearmed nations will no longer be American allies. They will be independent great powers pursuing their own strategic interests in a multi¬polar world. They will owe nothing to the United States; on the contrary, they will view it with the same antagonism and fear that they direct toward Russia and China. Indeed, having been strategically abandoned by the U.S. while suffering from American economic predation and possibly territorial aggression, they are likely to become hotbeds of anti-¬Americanism. At the very least, they will not be the same countries Americans know today.
[more}
The Atlantic (paywalled)
https://archive.ph/QjJw5
What if Rod Serling introduced a Twilight Zone episode about the orange dictator?
— (@slackingpro.bsky.social) 2026-01-06T16:45:00.039Z
TNR: Bessent Says Oil Prices Will Drop "if Something Happens" in Venezuela
https://newrepublic.com/post/203517/trump-ukraine-peace-deal-russian-language-snip-
On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that oil prices could go down “if something happens down in Venezuela.”
“I am very confident about job growth and the momentum that we’ve got for next year,” Bessent told Laura Ingraham on Fox News. “Capital expenditure is always followed by job growth. The peace deals—we are seeing a peace dividend from that. And I think there’s a very good chance that if something happens with Russia, Ukraine, if something happens down in Venezuela, that we could really see oil prices go down even more.”
The remark from a top Trump official appears to suggest that the administration is planning for “something” to happen in Venezuela. Trump has cast the country as a major drug-trafficking hub to justify his strikes of drug boats in the surrounding waters, and seems to have regime change—potentially through military intervention—as his ultimate goal.
“U.S. military action could trigger a crisis on the same order as happened in Iraq after the U.S. regime change effort there,” Caracas-based International Crisis Group senior analyst Phil Gunson told The New Republic. “If the U.S. does decapitate the government, the multiple armed actors could bring about a degree of anarchy. None of these different groups have any incentive to just lay down their arms. There have been several decades of accumulated resentments on various sides, and it’s not fanciful to imagine that there could be lynchings. There could be bombings or selective assassinations.”
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Trump has the Epstein files.* What else is he hiding?
My addition to the great suggestion at * https://democraticunderground.com/100220553457
Republicans Are Cutting Medicare. Not Only Medicaid, Medicare
https://prospect.org/politics/2025-07-03-republicans-cutting-medicare-not-only-medicaid/Because of a statutory requirement to automatically impose budget cuts when legislation increases the deficit, the Big Beautiful Bill would require automatic sequestration cuts across the board, something that has been confirmed by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) but has been largely absent from the debate over the bill. Medicare is one of the programs that will face the axe, and the damage sums to $490 billion over the next ten years, starting in the next fiscal year that begins in October. While many of the safety-net cuts in the bill are delayed to help Republicans with their re-election campaigns, the Medicare cuts must begin next year.
The Statutory Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) Act of 2010 requires the Office of Management and Budget to keep scorecards that track the cumulative effects of legislation on the budget deficit, based on estimates from the CBO. The Senate version of the Big Beautiful Bill adds roughly $3.3 trillion in debt over the next ten years. That will have to be made up through automatic sequestration cuts.
--snip--
Therefore, OMB would be required to issue an order reducing spending by $330 billion by January 2026. Many accounts are exempted from sequestration, including Social Security and several programs affecting low-income Americans. But Medicare is not.
There is a limitation on Medicare cuts of 4 percent of the program. In fiscal year 2026, that would come out to $45 billion. These cuts would increase with the growth of the program, hitting $75 billion by 2034 according to CBO. The total ten-year cuts would equal $490 billion.
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Op-Ed: In the Future, China Will Be Dominant. The U.S. Will Be Irrelevant.
What do you guys think about this NYT op-ed. To me, it's frighteningly likely. Talk me down?
Mr. Chan is a researcher at Princeton University who focuses on Chinese industrial policy.
阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版
For years, theorists have posited the onset of a “Chinese century”: a world in which China finally harnesses its vast economic and technological potential to surpass the United States and reorient global power around a pole that runs through Beijing.
That century may already have dawned, and when historians look back they may very well pinpoint the early months of President Trump’s second term as the watershed moment when China pulled away and left the United States behind.
It doesn’t matter that Washington and Beijing have reached an inconclusive and temporary truce in Mr. Trump’s trade war. The U.S. president immediately claimed it as a win, but that only underlines the fundamental problem for the Trump administration and America: a shortsighted focus on inconsequential skirmishes as the larger war with China is being decisively lost.
Mr. Trump is taking a wrecking ball to the pillars of American power and innovation. His tariffs are endangering U.S. companies’ access to global markets and supply chains. He is slashing public research funding and gutting our universities, pushing talented researchers to consider leaving for other countries. He wants to roll back programs for technologies like clean energy and semiconductor manufacturing and is wiping out American soft power in large swaths of the globe.
--much more--
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/opinion/china-us-trade-tariffs.html
Watch this, please!!! Dark gothic maga: How Tech Billionaires plan to destroy America
This video lays out exactly what Musk, Theil, Andreeson, Vance. et al are after. I seldom post videos, much less recommend them, but this unravels their plans brilliantly! Not just that, but Trump is supporting it. Please watch it.
Musk Is Likely to Get a West Wing Office for His Cost-Cutting Project
Source: New York Times
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is likely to be given office space in the West Wing, putting him close to President Trump as Mr. Musk steers a project that aims to cut as much as $2 trillion in government spending, two people with knowledge of the planning said on Monday.
Mr. Musk had been expected to be situated in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is in the White House complex but not in the West Wing proper. But he has for many days been asking about his level of access, signaling a desire for proximity to Mr. Trump, according to the people.
Mr. Trump had wanted Mr. Musk to have the space, one of the people said. Mr. Musk has been given a badge for the White House complex and was said to be working there on Monday. He has filled out paperwork to be brought onboard for the role and already has a government email address.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/20/us/politics/elon-musk-office-west-wing.html
Trump Sued Over Musk Cost-Cutting Effort by US Government Worker Union
Source: Bloomberg
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The lawsuit from the American Federation of Government Employees and government watchdog groups Public Citizen and State Democracy Defenders Fund was one of three cases filed as Trump was being sworn in on Monday challenging the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE. The AFGE case claims that the initiative violates a 1972 US law requiring checks on conflicts of interest, ideological balance and transparency for groups with a direct line to the White House.
The federal employees union wrote in its case that the Federal Advisory Committee Act features “guardrails” to stop groups “from turning into vehicles for advancing private interests in the federal decision-making process and secretly influencing federal officials’ exercise of policymaking discretion.”
The cases mark the beginning of an expected barrage of legal action against Trump’s agenda, which includes efforts to shrink the size and reach of federal agencies.
Two other cases were also filed in federal court in Washington. One was filed by Democracy Forward and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington on behalf of groups representing teachers, veterans and public health and car safety advocates. The third case was brought by the law firm National Security Counselors.
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-20/trump-sued-over-musk-doge-effort-by-us-government-worker-union?utm_medium=email&utm_source=author_alert&utm_term=250120&utm_campaign=author_22946324&leadSource=uverify%20wall&embedded-checkout=true
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