Might be worthwhile placing bets how long Trump will remain in power before he is removed. He is absolutely crackers. I cannot see him last the four years if he keeps coming up with stuff like this and invading Greenland. Insulting and with no understanding of the issues.
I’ll bet he’s not, he’s dismantling or manipulating membership of all the bodies that could do it and Republicans won’t bin their POTUS whatever
There are even rumours about repealing the 22nd Amendment, so the Orange turd can float around for yet another term.
More than rumours. https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-joint-resolution/15 This from the sycophantic oaf proposing it. https://ogles.house.gov/media/press...g-22nd-amendment-allow-trump-serve-third-term It's highly unlikely to receive the bipartisan support needed to be implemented. Any proposed amendment to the Constitution must be passed by a two-thirds majority vote in both the House and Senate and then ratified by at least 38 of the 50 U.S. states.
HIGNFY Donald Trump says Keir Starmer is "doing a very good job"; it's not clear what he's referring to but the smart money is on 'boosting Nigel's Farage's poll ratings' please log in to view this image
Interesting perspective on Musk from someone who actually knows him well (Philip Low, founder of NeuroVigil). I have known Elon Musk at a deep level for 14 years, well before he was a household name. We used to text frequently. He would come to my birthday party and invite me to his parties. He would tell me everything about his women problems. As sons of highly accomplished men who married venuses, were violent and lost their fortunes, and who were bullied in high school, we had a number of things in common most people cannot relate to. We would hang out together late in Los Angeles. He would visit my San Diego lab. He invested in my company. Elon is not a Nazi, per se. He is something much better, or much worse, depending on how you look at it. Nazis believed that an entire race was above everyone else. Elon believes he is above everyone else. He used to think he worked on the most important problems. When I met him, he did not presume to be a technical person — he would be the first to say that he lacked the expertise to understand certain data. That happened later. Now, he acts as if he has all the solutions. All his talk about getting to Mars to “maintain the light of consciousness” or about “free speech absolutism” is actually BS Elon knowingly feeds people to manipulate them. Everything Elon does is about acquiring and consolidating power. That is why he likes far right parties, because they are easier to control. That is also why he gave himself $56 Billion which could have gone to the people actually doing the work and innovations he is taking credit for at Tesla (the reason he does not do patents is because he would not be listed as an inventor as putting a fake inventor on a patent would kill it and moreover it would reveal the superstars behind the work). His lust for power is also why he did xAI and Neuralink, to attempt to compete with OpenAI and NeuroVigil, respectively, despite being affiliated with them. Unlike Tesla and Twitter, he was unable to conquer those companies and tried to create rivals. He announced Neuralink just after I invited his ex-wife, which she and I notified him about, to a fundraising dinner for Hebrew University in London (The fact that she tried to kiss me — I immediately pushed her away — while taking a photo at that event, even if playfully, clearly may have added to the alienation and possible emasculation he may have felt when she spoke to me in a pool at a party when they were together and she was naked. To not be disrespectful to her or to him, I stayed but looked at the sky whilst talking to her). I fired him with cause in December 2021 when he tried to undermine NV. It is ironic that years later, he clearly tried to undermine Twitter before buying it, and in my view, blowing it up and using it to manipulate the masses to lean to the far right in country after country, including the USA. [Here is more detail as some people asked. After he received a press release draft confirming NV never took a penny from the US Government, he asked to be removed from the Business Advisory Board, but then tried to give the stock he bought back, including for no money, which could have completely crashed NV’s stock price. I told him he was fired from the BAB, with cause, as he admitted he had not been participating. That also meant he had no ability to exercise his stock options (years prior, despite not being allowed to discuss his investment because of a solid NDA, he/his people leaked to the press that he had invested twice as much in NV as he actually did, as if the stock options had been counted as stock). This is the email I sent him around that time: “Elon, Only one of us apparently knows the difference between Science and PR, and between friendship and phonies, and unfortunately you ain’t it. Let’s cut ties here. Your NV stock is not being transferred, and if you try to transfer it without my consent, in contravention of your stock purchase agreement, I will have to shove my boots so deep up your derrière, legally, that your pissing contest with Bezos will seem like it was from another life, one you want to get back to. Good luck with your implants, all of them, and with building Pottersville on Mars. Seriously, don’t **** with me.” Elon has less than 0.05% of NV and was never a principal or principal investor in NV as was falsely reported by some. I own between 80 and 90%. NV is the most valuable neurotech company in the world and does not regard Neuralink as a competitor because we have an arsenal of patents and introduced our technology to customers in 2009 and furthermore do not view their implantable technology as scalable. Moreover, the company is apparently under investigation regarding statements Elon made to investors and most of Neuralink’s co-founders ditched Elon and the company.] Elon did two Nazi salutes. He did them for five main reasons: 1. He was concerned that the “Nazi wing” of the MAGA movement, under the influence of Steve Bannon, would drive him away from Trump, somewhere in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, rather than in the West Wing which is where he wants to be. He was already feeling raw over the fact that Trump did not follow his recommendation for Treasury Secretary and that the Senate also did not pick his first choice; 2. He was upset that he had had to go to Israel and Auschwitz to make up for agreeing with a Nazi sympathizer online and wanted to reclaim his “power” just like when he told advertisers to “go **** yourself”. This has nothing to do with Asperger’s; 3. There are some Jews he actually hates: Sam Altman is amongst them; 4. He enjoys a good thrill and knew exactly what he was doing; 5. His narcissistic self was hoping the audience would reflect his abject gesture back to him, thereby showing complete control and dominion over it, and increasing his leverage over Trump. That did not happen. Bottom line: Elon is not a Nazi but he did give two Nazi Salutes, which is completely unacceptable. ——————————————————————————- N.B. For the few whining about my post “sans connaissance the cause” and either trembling about my having shattered their illusions about their cult leader or thinking I am defending Elon: I. My point is that he is transactional rather than ideological; II. That being said, I am not defending him or his actions, just explaining them and confirming that he did, in fact, do two Nazi Salutes if anyone had doubts or believed the doctored footage of Taylor Swift doing the same thing to normalize what Elon did; III. At some point, it matters to few people if one is a Nazi or if one acts like one. My father was a Holocaust Survivor. 32 out of 35 of his family members were murdered by Nazis. My mother’s grandparents were murdered in Auschwitz; IV. After Elon tried to manipulate NV’s stock in 2021, I fired him with cause, and he was unable to exercise his stock options. In the aftermath of the Nazi Salutes, I told both him and his wealth manager to **** off. Any remaining friendship between us ended with the Nazi Salutes. He is blocked on my end and I am pretty sure I am blocked on his; V. I did not share what he told me in confidence. I just happen to know him extremely well, the person, the aspirations and the Musk Mask; VI. I know who I am, have no desire to be famous and give exceedingly few media interviews. I prefer to work in obscurity and let the work speak for itself. I am certainly not envious and would definitely not want Elon’s life, including living in a bubble and having to make one outlandish claim after another and manipulate the public, elections and governments to shore up my stock and prevent the bubble from bursting. Unlike Elon, I am an actual scientist and inventor and I am not pretending to be someone I am not, like a fellow who got his BA in Econ at 26 all of a sudden pretending to be an expert in mechanical engineering, chemistry, rocket science, neuroscience and AI and keeping the people actually doing the work hidden and paying people to play online games in his name to appear smart and feed his so-called “Supergenius” Personality Cult — the “Imperator” has no clothes, and he knows it. I am just very disappointed in what happened to someone I had a lot of deep admiration for and the first person to find out about my concerns about his behavior was always him; VII. He is the one who betrayed a number of his friends, including Sergey, and, given his actions, many other people who believed him and believed in him. I have no sympathy for this behavior, and at some point, after having repeatedly confronted it in private, I believe the ethical thing to do is to speak out, forcefully and unapologetically, whatever the risks may be, so as to not be part of the timid flock remaining silent while evil is being done, including propping up far right governments around the world in part to deregulate his companies and become the first trillionaire and otherwise to “rule the planet” — he knows Mars won’t be terraformed in his lifetime and he really wants his planet. No joke… Ethics matter. People matter. The truth matters. I took down Descartes (through the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness) and I am definitely not afraid of a so-called inventor whose greatest invention is his image. I will not be silent. You should not be either. I am a sovereign individual, and so are you. I stood up to bullies, and am stepping out of the dark to do it again. Stop working for him and being exploited by him. Sell your Tesla and dump your Tesla stock. Nikola Tesla was a great, creative and courageous man who led with ethics and by example and he would not have wanted for his good name to have been used by him and would agree with my principled stance. Sign off of “X” which is boosting far right propaganda, and of your Starlink as well. He is a complete **** (British slang not meant to be offensive to women) who doesn’t give a **** about you — only about power. Just ask Reid Hoffman. He only wants to control, dominate and use you — don’t let him and cut him and his businesses out of your and your loved ones’ lives entirely. Remember he is a total miserable self-loathing poser, and unless you happen to be one too, he will be much more afraid of you than you should ever be of him. He will probably come after me, and I am completely fine with that. I am a self-made multibillionaire with an armada of lawyers — literally — and most importantly, I know who I am and who I stand for, the people and their freedoms, whatever happens. He can send his dumb Proud Boys and Oath Keepers after me and they will be butchered on sight. Either way, I would rather die with honor than live as a coward. “Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” — Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate
No surprise there then, turkeys voted for Christmas. YouGov @YouGov The number of Britons saying the UK was right to vote to leave the EU has hit its lowest level since the referendum, ahead of the fifth anniversary of Brexit on Friday Right to vote to leave: 30% (-3 from Nov) Wrong to vote to leave: 55% (=) please log in to view this image https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/51484-how-do-britons-feel-about-brexit-five-years-on Most Britons support rejoining the EU % who support... Rejoin EU: 55% Closer relationship with EU, without rejoining it or components: 64% Rejoin Single Market: 50% Rejoin Customs Union: 48% Status quo: 27% Loosening ties further: 19%
Hopefully this will bode well for the next election, with regards to people remembering the part played by Farage, although the English are a weird bunch and seem to fall for the snake oil seller’s “charm”. Maybe if things don’t go too well for Starmer, over the first 3 years of his governing, the other MPs might try and force him into offering the people another vote, after all, it would be democratic to do so.
Some odd numbers there in that rejoin is at 55%, single market: 50% customs union: 48% when the latter two would be, I would have thought, part of the rejoin article. The rejoin/dissatisfied number in the under 30 age group is much higher. I can't see a referendum this parliament though.
I wonder of anyone thinks that we have diminished the European Union by leaving? I do not think that we would be joining the same Union we left. It has emboldened the extreme Right who cannot see the damage done to our economy. Farage has effectively encouraged every Right Wing nutter in Europe. I do feel that the EU should change and stop being pro-business and become pro-citizen. Politicians have made the mistake of bowing to business and Liberal politics. It would be much better if it changed to a more internationalist position which held capitalism to account and recognise it for the race to the bottom it is. I am perplexed by contemporary politics. When I was becoming more aware of politics in 1980s, political idealism meant supporting the Left. Nowadays radicals are now on the extreme Right. Forty years ago this would not have been thought possible . People saw Margaret Thatcher as being reactionary in confronting the EU. Nowadays, it is the EU that is opposed as being something against the interests of free minded Europeans. The EU needs to reinvent itself so they the message that European unity is beneficial strikes home. We should never have been in a position where Brexit was somehow considered desirable. Re join by all means but let it be a driver to look after the interests of everyone in Europe.
Heard a saying the other day on one of the business sites where I’m a member; USA innovates, China replicates & Europe regulates. It’s probably from 10yrs ago & a bit OTT regarding USA & of course China are now definitely at the forefront of tech but bang on with Europe.
All UK water companies are robbing people, yet still paying dividends whilst being in debt. It should be illegal for a company, that is in debt, to pay dividends. Just paid my last quarterly water bill - €78.
