changegonnacome

Kind of.....true whataboutism...like that practised by the hardcore Trumpers....involves not admitting that Trump has done anything wrong...they just pivot to saying whatabout Joe Biden......I've clearly said that Tim Waltz should go to prison if he covered it up.....that they should all go to prison Tim and the Somalis.......whataboutists never say that..........so close-ish but no true whataboutism cigar I'm afraid!

For sure - nobody here should be excused and punishment should be meated out with vigor....Tim Waltz, the Somali medicaid pirates etc.......but what I would say is the MSM on the right and twitter-right are acting like there's never been or they've never seen what looks like pretty standard medicaid fraud like this before......I mean with all the same hallmarks of kind of network/community collusion to make it work.....maybe it will turn out to be the biggest medicaid fraud scheme ever uncovered but right now it looks alot like a run of the mill one in $$$ terms.......alot of inflated DOGE-esque fraud numbers being thrown around like confetti to get clicks.... lets see if it turns out to be Philip Esformes Florida nursing home level care fraud of about $1.3bn in medicare............you might remeber Trump pardoned him in 2020 as he left office - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/health-care-fraudster-philip-esformes-latest-trump-clemency-recipient-rcna175681 "Philip Esformes, who had owned Florida nursing homes, was convicted at trial in 2019 of 20 criminal counts related to what the Department of Justice at the time said was the largest health-care fraud scheme ever prosecuted by the department. The DOJ said that Esformes and co-conspirators for more than two decades cycled thousands of Medicare and Medicaid patients through a network of nursing and assisted living facilities despite the fact they did not qualify for such care." But to be clear Philip Esformes & his co-conspirators deserved prison.......and so do these Somali scumbags. No excuses for those defrauding government funded healthcare directed at those that need it most...and that is slowly sending us bankrupt!

Medicaid & medicare fraud is widespread.....various rackets have been in existence in various states and perpetrated by surprisingly interconnected ethnic and religious communities for decades....the nature of medicaid/medicare frauds requires Valeant levels of unrelated related entities & parties....patients, providers and labyrinth LLC's in cahoots....they naturally propagate in highly interconnected communities...sometimes those communities are Somali's, sometimes those communities are White protestants.......the Somali one is perfectly packaged for the MAGA base cause it involves immigrants (who should all be deported if found guilty & not American citizens).....but this podcast was an eye opener for me on the subject really worth a listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-fraudsters-are-bilking-the-government-out/id1056200096?i=1000677298171&l=fr-FR

And my big mistake was not following @hasilp89 into Zeg....even though he brought it to my attention and I kinda knew he was right but I'd thrown European telcos in my mental trash can (shame on me!).

That's the bull case for sure....the bear case is the European's, without the US security umbrella, will do what they've done for centuries.....turn on each other. Europe remains despite all the decades of EU 'integration' a continent of many distinct countries, cultures and languages (with a bloody history & generational grievances). NATO immediately post-world war two was indeed a defensive alliance against the mighty USSR.....however for the last three decades (since the USSR's demise) NATO has been primarily a 'pacifier' to ensure rivalries of old on the continent have no reason to ignite as each European power (the ones that matter) defacto outsourced their 'defense' to the USA. Defense spending being a misnomer IMO - defense spending is fundamentally simply re-armament......Trump seems to think that having individual European countries engaging in re-armament is a good idea for the Europeans and good idea for the USA long term......that is not what the history book says.

Amen. Political own goal. I'm sure competent advisors, chiefs of staff, DOJ AG's in his first term would have helped him come up with the 'right' strategy re: Epstein.....this Epstein mess is what happens when you surround yourself with a bunch of C and D players cause you wanted/needed blind loyalty instead of competency. I mean can one imagine a Bill Barr headed DOJ signing off on the DOJ putting binders together and having a bunch of influencers holding up the 'new' Epstein files outside the WH 6 months ago? Not a chance. It was as dumb as it sounds.

I suspect there are things he isnt proud off from his Epstein friendship days (financial and behavior related) - he'd prefer the whole name and period of his life would go away. What he's guilty off is the hubris to think he could MAKE it go away..... perversely his response to the Epstein files release chorus has meant that period of his life is under more scrutiny than it has ever been. The 'Streisand effect' on steroids and an own goal IMO.

You bet every other "case" in the Epstein files is undoubtedly weak sauce.....and that includes Trump, Clinton etc.

His genius is taking the core Republican vote (which lets be clear is not a winning WH coalition) and stacking on top of it voters that just aren't usually that engaged or even vote in elections.....its the incrementalism he brings that makes him a GOP god cause without him I dont think they get to the White House during the 47 & 49 terms.....the cost is that incremental group are a ragtag group (conspiracists, crypto peeps, Epstein-ists, Q, actual racists, white supremcists).....Trump riffs for 3hrs at rallys cause he's actually speaking to about 200 hundred different sub-groups who need a bone tossed to them...... Anyway Trump 'works' during a Presidential campaign for the reason above (plus exceptionally weak Democratic opponents).....but the Trump train falls apart when he's not on the ballot like at the midterms......his incremental voters dont show up and the dumb stuff he does WHILE President (Rob Reiner tweet) turn off core Republican voters and are fuel to the fire for the Democratic base who are all fired up by Epstein/Reiner/USAID/ICE and are going to come out in droves in 26.....not sure GOP have a better alternative, cause if they had they would have stabbed Trump in the back already....and in his defense he got them the WH, Senate, House in 2025...and that is a win with a capital W.

Yep - what he's guilty off re:Epstein is arrogance and misjudgment.....the arrogance to think he could say he would release them and then not.....and the misjudgment to think that it would go away cause he could bully the GOP into making it go away......very poor politics by the President

Agree......but also lets agree the idea that there was incremental slam dunk prosecutions just sitting inside the Epstein files is also nonsense including Trump and others wish lists (Clinton, Gates etc.).....the simplest explanation is the one I gave above..... - there are/we're embarrassing things in there about Trump (we see that now)..... - he wanted to stop their release to stop the embarrassment....... - Trump completely overestimated his ability to control the GOP and the Epstein narrative which made him look guilty of something - that arrogant misjudgment has blown up in his face

When you hire clowns you shouldn't be surprised when they put on a circus....which is what we have. Agree - never attribute to malice or cunning that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Not sure the Epstein case was top of mind for many people or voters except the Q fringes.....but it most certainly sprung to top of mind as soon as it became abundantly clear to all with eyes and ears that Trump was so rabidly desperate for the files to stay unreleased in complete and utter contradiction to his statements during the election. I'm not saying he's guilty of anything and assuming he's completely innocent of crimes- he made a very poor decision to fight the groundswell for the Epstein files release so fiercely (perhaps it did to save himself some incremental public embarrassment). The American public isnt stupid.....and POTUS might as well have put "CoverUp" baseball hat on for the last few months. Trump and his team have handled this very poorly - their calculation clearly was that they could control the House and Senate Republicans and jacknife the release then bury the Epstein chatter. He and his team should have known better they've marshalled conspiracy theories and theorists for political benefits & expediency for years now. They are not light switches you turn on and off. The effort and political capital spent by the administration/POTUS ultimately failing to stop the release was a monumental political miscalculation and that miscalculation I'm assuming was all Trump's - as I'm almost certain folks close to the Hill would have been telling him it was inevitable that House and Senate Republicans we're going to cross the aisle on this issue and he needed to stand down far in advance of that. I think Trump's arrogance was that he could stop it all. He didn't. Seconds before they did cross the aisle, Trump capitulated with his now infamous truthsocial 360.......but it was too late the damage was done......legitimately Trump can claim Democrats created the 'Russia, Russia, Russia' narrative in his first term......but the reality is Trump needs to own the fact that he himself has created the 'Epstein, Epstein, Epstein' issue that has and will cloud his whole second term.

Nah dont hate him.....wish him the best....but do know he's a moron......and so I hate the idea of moron being in such a consequential position.....and as I said above I do enjoy watching his power get diminished by this Epstein association not because i wish him ill will but rather its a postive that a moron is slowly losing his previous iron grip over the GOP

nobody here is sifting through anything....but you know the media is....and so when that media finds a postcard from Epstein to Larry Nasser in the DOJ files where Epstein is saying El Prez is 'one of them' and its just tough luck the way the ball breaks sometimes "life isnt fair".....any right minded citizen stops for a second and say geez that isnt good to have POTUS namechecked like this....all while out doing fun shit with our kids. El Prez supporters can never quite bring themselves to say- yeah not a good look for Trumpty Dumpty.....and broadly these are the same folks that called for Bill Clintons head for getting a blowy in the Oval Office from an adult woman!

@cubsfan all i I heard this year from Trump was how hot the economy was cause he fixed it and how tariffs are creating manufacturing boom. Yet here we are - facts not feelings > - unemployment was 4.0% when he came into office, it’s now 4.6% - since came into office the US has lost 63,000 manufacturing jobs!!! Not a good year for the economy as the facts and polling data shows and he can shout at TV cameras all he wants during Presidential addresses claiming otherwise but you know you can’t tell people they never had it so good when they’re struggling to buy groceries. Totally accept that the boom maybe yet to come….but let’s stay rooted in reality here….Trump’s first year on an economic platform has not been a success. 2026 maybe a dividend period for all the work done in 2025 I hope so!

US Politics is a low rent soap opera......it just so happens that what happens in DC matters for the economy/markets......a diminished Trump due to Epstein, then the Dems getting back in control in the House maybe even the Senate takes alot of Trump moron risk off the table.....some people dont think he's a moron and they are entitled to their opinion.....I am firmly in the Trump moron camp with Rex Tillerson, Gen Kelly et al who all saw this idiot up close in his first four years and below the whistle....anything that diminishes his power to do truly dumb stuff it to be welcomed....whats left after that is just his ability to affect kind of traditional GOP policy which I can get behind.....Trump Lite is a good result for everyone IMO.....we had full fat Trump in 2025 (DOGE, Liberation Day) but thankfully those dumb dumb days are behind us I think.

I've said a million times.....Trump aint a pedo....but I think you've got to admit @Gregmal that if given the choice as a politician you'd prefer not to be referenced in postcards like this by convicted pedos one of which used to be your best friend.....poltical capital matters and Trump has lost alot because of ties to Epstein and the blocking of the release of the Epstein files......which we all know why now........2025 is/was peak Trump....he feels already like a diminished figure and that is only going to accelerate I think

I think he needs to try a bit harder than Greenland.....time to invade Venezuela i think https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet 8/EFTA00035768.pdf " Dear L. N. As you know by now, I have taken the “short route” home. Good luck! We shared one thing… our love & caring for young ladies at the hope they’d reach their full potential. Our president shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to “grab snatch,” whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair. Yours J. Epstein" L.N is Larry Nasser....the famous sports physician paedo!

Yep Europe have at least raised the cost for Russia of continuing the war by putting together this €90b package.....Trump's complete capitulation before getting to the negotiating table is not how wars are actually ended....they are ended when the costs relative to the gains to each side of continuing the war become intolerable (i.e. mutually hurting stalemate).......Trump's simplistic solution was to attempt to collapse the Ukrainian side forgetting they have Europe's support & are in an existential fight for their lives. If he truly wanted the war ended waving the white flag to Russia was not the way to do it....it simply emboldened Putin in his settlement demands ensuring Ukraine couldn't countenance a peace deal on those terms.....the correct strategy, obvious to anyone with half a brain, was to raise the theoretical costs to Russia to continuing the war before setting the table for peace talks such that you minimized Russia's demands such that some thin landing strip could be found.

Truth Social - https://truthsocial.com/@truthsocial/posts/115740353552762086 "We’re excited to announce that we’ve signed a merger agreement with TAE Technologies, the world’s leading nuclear fusion company with the proven technology to build the first utility-scale fusion power plants." Great entertainment, truly, to watch the President's truth social entity touch every scuzzbucket public equity market game imaginable.....coming public via SPAC, jumping on the bitcoin treasury company fad at its peak and now hitching a ride on fusion! nuclear power via a merger Last quarter the company had $972k in REVENUES When you get down to it (TMTG, Memecoins) the President of the United is running a boiler room. Wild.

Its a crazy system......the biggest issue when you get down to it....is price has been abstracted away from the end consumer of the healthcare itself and indeed the insurance premiums being paid . When you think about it: (1) the cost of care itself is obscured behind layers and layers of bureaucracy & administration.........no consumer of healthcare really knows the cost of care, at the point of care....co-pay is not a price signal.... (2) then the US takes it a step further.......and makes the cost of insurance itself opaque to the insured.....via the employer benefits system where lots of Americans get their insurance through their employer.......which means the insured person has no idea how much their insurance actually costs and doesnt think of it as a true cost to them but rather their employer. The price/quality signal across the whole stack has been lost to intermediaries, administrators and agents.

You bet - but dont remember anyone dying re: Last Temptation........if somebody was dumb enough to make the 'Last Temptation of Muhammed' well I can almost assure you there would be bloodshed over it....remember not so long ago people getting killed in France over cartoons of him, little cartoons! - Charlie Hebdo massacre and then a teacher in 2020 being beheaded for showing a caricature in class in France again! There is false equivalence between Islam and the other majors religions IMO and it ignores what everyone implicitly knows but is too afraid to say lest they be accused of Islamophobia - which is the volume and sheer brutality and barbarity of attacks perpetrated on per worshiper basis in the name of Muhammed dwarfs any of the other major world religions.

Thought experiment stolen from Sam Harris to help you understand what I think people instinctively understand....what would be the consequences of a musical called "The Book of Muhammad" ala Book of Mormon lampooning Islam running in a theatre in Midtown Manhattan? You know the answer....the Theatre would require round the clock police barricade, bomb threats would ensure, the cast, writers would be under fatwa and their lives would be in genuine in danger etc. etc. 1B is a lot of people.....there are alot of Christians out there too.....and there would be no concern running a show called the Book of Jesus....could something violent happen at the Book of Jesus sure....but if you ran the "The Book of Muhammad" I'm almost certain something violent and crazy would happen around it. So I think what people realize is that Islam at its extremes has violent radical element that marks it out as unusual....now Christianity has it too......what makes Islam unusual (potentially because of its relative youth) is just the numbers of its followers globally who seem to live out at that extreme end of the radicalized spectrum.

Its called 'whataboutism'...... its used broadly when there is no way to defend the issue raised....its a form of deflection....in debating its broadly seen as the waving of a white flag on an issue (checkmate so to speak if it we're chess) in a similar way that ad hominem attacks are seen.

2nd grand jury refuses to indict New York AG Letitia James https://abcnews.go.com/US/2nd-time-grand-jury-refuses-indict-new-york/story?id=128279779 Comey/Letitia indictments didn't last long!!!........you know two things are clear by now both good..... - first Trump & the folks around him are kinda incompetent wannabe autocrats and seem to fail consistently on bureaucratic procedural rigor (a) cause this isn't the A-team - the AG Bondi went to Florida's fifth best law school and a firmly rooted 3rd tier instituation nationally but (b) there seems to be little strategy going on from the WH just last minute truthsocial impulses of El Prez (see his DM to Bondi that ended up on his feed on TruthSocial).....his underlings then try to rush through these whims to please him making all manner of errors....... - the second is even more important..... the institutions - the judiciary and citizen grand juries call bullshit on bullshit even if that bullshit is coming directly from the Oval Office....quite unprecedented to see TWO separate Grand Juries now reject an indictment against James. We are very lucky to live in a county like this....even if the President of United States wants you indicted and locked up he cant get it done if there's no merit to the case!