President Biden's first term in office

[Lord Thesaurian]

The pandemic revealed vulnerabilities of this hyper-efficient global market. Ports are backed up causing shortages — for the first time in many Americans’ lives. The odds are that eventually the port issues will be resolved (we hope). But there are reasons to believe the age of over-abundance is over. Even before the pandemic the U.S. government offered more subsidies and imposed more tariffs to encourage companies to produce more goods domestically, and the Biden administration wants to expand the effort to promote resilency. That may mean more goods are made in America, but over the long run less trade tends to mean less variety of goods at higher prices.

In short, with higher prices, a more eco-conscious population and less trade bringing fewer cheap products, Americans may have to get used to consuming like Europeans. We will certainly not be deprived, but we will trim back our excesses, perhaps be more thoughtful about what we buy and purchase fewer, higher-quality goods.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/ar...like-europeans

Americans are finding out the hard way what happens when America withdraws from the world and politicians prioritize comfort over success. Having been to Western Europe for extended periods, this is a horrifying reality I anticipated years ago. Perusing small shelves in small shops lined with small, overpriced and less dynamic goods bought by people who make less and consume less than Americans, loitering about with higher unemployment, lower growth and spend more of their lives under their parents’ roofs, I realized just how grateful I am for American freedom and power, and our globalized economy of scale that allows us to take risks and make money for our own selves in all kinds of ways.

I shuddered to think how boring and pointless life would be if I had to live like a European, and thought about my own ancestors who chose to risk it all on a dangerous trip to the middle of nowhere in America, with no family and no connections waiting for them on the other side, rather than continue living in that place. And now here we are, our own institutions telling us to abandon the American experiment in liberty “for sustainability.” The financial and political elites are trying to crack down on crypto “for sustainability.” We’re supposed to eat bugs and plants “for sustainability.” We’re supposed to give up individual freedoms “for sustainability.” Be poorer “for sustainability.” Live like a European “for sustainability.” Are you awake yet?

It is nonetheless appropriate that the US should be drifting toward a European political and social climate as American power and dynamism declines, another symptom of the disease. We don’t need to wonder what awaits us. A look across the pond shows what was once home to the most wealthy and powerful countries ever, now doomed to indefinite stagnation, flatlined growth, a nonexistent military and a paralyzed, impotent foreign policy leading to subjugation by foreign powers. We owe it to ourselves as Americans to preserve the Revolution and our way of life against the slow death of mediocrity, and it starts with one word: “No.”

[antaeus]

Interesting... I studied in France for a year, and lived in New York for 2. I found that the supermarkets were bigger with product options from as far away as Armenia or Egypt in Marseilles, and the lifestyle smaller and more expensive in New York - with far more expensive cosmopolitan shopping options... and nobody could afford their own place.

I guess experience subjective.

But yeah. We have a lot to thank American consumerism. Even if the rest of the world is moving on without it.

[irontaino]

*snip*

Yikes.

In other news, 102 bodies identified at a Native American boarding school. Much like Canada, forcible assimilation in brutal conditions under the auspices of the Federal Government and various churches was a matter of policy up until the 1990s. Biden's Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, is spearheading the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative which will likely uncover a great many more.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Innuendo aside, the article explains the kids mostly died of disease. I always get a kick out of the copium though, like it’s some great travesty. My ancestors stopped worshipping trees and rocks and started praying to Jesus after the pagans were put down by force. They moved out of the forests and into the towns, later forgot Norwegian and German and Danish and whatever they spoke in Tonga,, learned English and the Pledge of Allegiance like everyone else. And I’m far better off than I ever could have been as a result. If only the whole world had received the gift when it was fashionable to give it out, the world might be at peace today. Such is the gift of civilization, and it merits far more gratitude than scorn.

Interesting... I studied in France for a year, and lived in New York for 2. I found that the supermarkets were bigger with product options from as far away as Armenia or Egypt in Marseilles, and the lifestyle smaller and more expensive in New York - with far more expensive cosmopolitan shopping options... and nobody could afford their own place.

I guess experience subjective.

But yeah. We have a lot to thank American consumerism. Even if the rest of the world is moving on without it.

Doug Carswell put it best:

If Americans lived like Europeans, the world would still be using Nokias, printed encyclopaedias, diesel cars, waiting for a covid vaccine and at the mercy of Russia for energy needs. The world is a better place because America is not like Europe

The big problem is, no one’s around to pick up the slack America is leaving on the ground as we sleep walk into oblivion. And that’s why the world will continue to be worse off if we don’t snap out of it.

[irontaino]

Innuendo aside, the article explains the kids mostly died of disease.

Never said they didn't. Doesn't make the conditions they were put in any less brutal, or the punishments for minor offences, such as simply speaking their languages for instance, any less draconian. It doesn't negate the litany of abuses (physical, mental, sexual) that happened, again under the auspices of the Federal Government and the various churches that ran the schools.

I always get a kick out of the copium though, like it’s some great travesty.

So is attempting to gaslight just a hobby of yours or what? Never mind literal genocide, America is perfect and has never ever ever done anything wrong according to you, eh?

My ancestors stopped worshipping trees and rocks and started praying to Jesus after the pagans were put down by force.

So they stopped worshipping nature and began worshipping a Jewish zombie who's also his own father? Sound rational. What a great thing to force on people.

They moved out of the forests and into the towns, later forgot Norwegian and German and Danish and whatever they spoke in Tonga,, learned English and the Pledge of Allegiance like everyone else.

So you're trying to compare the experience of immigrants (who integrate/assimilate willingly) to natives (literally ripped from their families and forcibly assimilated). K then...

And I’m far better off than I ever could have been as a result. If only the whole world had received the gift when it was fashionable to give it out, the world might be at peace today. Such is the gift of civilization, and it merits far more gratitude than scorn.

America often forces her "gift" anyways, always with disastrous results (see Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin America throughout the entirety of the 20th century). It always leaves the place worse off and less peaceful, so that theory is out the window.

[Cyclops]

....
America often forces her "gift" anyways, always with disastrous results (see Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin America throughout the entirety of the 20th century). It always leaves the place worse off and less peaceful, so that theory is out the window.

(just to be completely clear): [sarcasm mode]

How dare you! Tonga is getting zero cost salt water therapy baths for the whole country, and Afghanistan is now 100% iceberg free. Or do you want another Titanic? I suppose you don't care about the Astors 'cause they were WHITE![sneers in copy/paste].

(and once again so we're completely clear): [/sarcasm]

Deep State/1%-serving factional smokescreens aside, Biden's administration seems as ineffective as the last joke of a president's one was. Maybe its the Constitution that's crap? Maybe a bit more healthcare and a bit less money printed for billionaires by both parties is needed?

Fingers crossed for you, US, your allies are hoping for the best.

[irontaino]

(just to be completely clear): [sarcasm mode]

How dare you! Tonga is getting zero cost salt water therapy baths for the whole country, and Afghanistan is now 100% iceberg free. Or do you want another Titanic? I suppose you don't care about the Astors 'cause they were WHITE![sneers in copy/paste].

(and once again so we're completely clear): [/sarcasm]

We cleared the icebergs in Afghanistan the same way Washington took back the airports

Deep State/1%-serving factional smokescreens aside, Biden's administration seems as ineffective as the last joke of a president's one was. Maybe its the Constitution that's crap? Maybe a bit more healthcare and a bit less money printed for billionaires by both parties is needed?

Electing senile old men to lead the country isn't anything new, Ronald Reagan was president after all. I think this is just the first time that we elected two of them in a row.

Fingers crossed for you, US, your allies are hoping for the best.

Don't cross your fingers, America imploding on itself is hilarious

[Lord Thesaurian]

Never said they didn't. Doesn't make the conditions they were put in any less brutal, or the punishments for minor offences, such as simply speaking their languages for instance, any less draconian. It doesn't negate the litany of abuses (physical, mental, sexual) that happened, again under the auspices of the Federal Government and the various churches that ran the schools.



So is attempting to gaslight just a hobby of yours or what? Never mind literal genocide, America is perfect and has never ever ever done anything wrong according to you, eh?



So they stopped worshipping nature and began worshipping a Jewish zombie who's also his own father? Sound rational. What a great thing to force on people.



So you're trying to compare the experience of immigrants (who integrate/assimilate willingly) to natives (literally ripped from their families and forcibly assimilated). K then...



America often forces her "gift" anyways, always with disastrous results (see Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin America throughout the entirety of the 20th century). It always leaves the place worse off and less peaceful, so that theory is out the window.

Apart from contrarian nonsense, I don’t see alot to engage here. If every person with full Native American ancestry gets a gazillion dollars and a letter of apology from George Washington, do the secular gods of the church of woke offer absolution, or will the sins of the father forever fall on the head of the son? I never said the US government never did anything wrong, nor is it relevant one way or another. To the extent the conquest of the Americas was genocidal, the culpability even for the European settlers themselves would hinge on the extent to which they understood the nature of disease and immunity at the time, and necessarily, the subsequent extent to which the diseases were spread deliberately for that purpose. Pushing natives off their land through warfare could be called ethnic cleansing, but then, the natives had been doing that to each other anyway, so as collective guilt goes, who is paying whom at this point? The Aztecs used the people they conquered as sacrificial animals until the Spanish put a stop to it and killed people with disease instead. How you manage to spread that guilt to their descendants is your business and I don’t care about it. And anyway, I’m as bothered by it as I am that the Celts and their culture were totally eradicated or that the Vikings colonized most of Britain at one time or another. The morality of those events is typically irrelevant to the historical observer. There was a war and the settlers won. Thank God.

[Infidel144]

Pushing natives off their land through warfare could be called ethnic cleansing, but then, the natives had been doing that to each other anyway, so as collective guilt goes, who is paying whom at this point?

I'm sure told you before, those others were not The People, so they don't count.

The Aztecs used the people they conquered as sacrificial animals until the Spanish put a stop to it and killed people with disease instead. How you manage to spread that guilt to their descendants is your business and I don’t care about it.

And is it unreasonable to sacrifice them to Huitzilopochtli, as long as it kept the sun moving across the sky? What alternative? Should everybody die? Ungrateful I say.

There was a war and the settlers won. Thank God.

We put up a good fight. We took a lot of scalps. We lost.
Over it now.

[Lord Thesaurian]

I'm sure told you before, those others were not The People, so they don't count.

And is it unreasonable to sacrifice them to Huitzilopochtli, as long as it kept the sun moving across the sky? What alternative? Should everybody die? Ungrateful I say.

We put up a good fight. We took a lot scalps. We lost.
Over it now.

The Cherokee nation owned African slaves. Calvin Coolidge extended full birthright US citizenship to the defeated native tribes, clarifying a constitutional question. Judging by the number of people crossing deserts and oceans for a shot at it, I’d say that just might be the best gift the US government can give.

[antaeus]

The big problem is, no one’s around to pick up the slack Rome is leaving on the ground as we sleep walk into oblivion. And that’s why the world will continue to be worse off if we don’t snap out of it.

The big problem is, no one’s around to pick up the slack the UK is leaving on the ground as we sleep walk into oblivion. And that’s why the world will continue to be worse off if we don’t snap out of it.

Corrected it for the 5th century... or the 19th...

Unless someone glasses the planet, the world will continue to be the world.

But yes. We have a lot to thank American exceptionalism for. But then I don't share your view that the US is shrinking back from the world. It's just changing the nature of its engagement.

[Lord Thesaurian]

The big problem is, no one’s around to pick up the slack the UK is leaving on the ground as we sleep walk into oblivion. And that’s why the world will continue to be worse off if we don’t snap out of it.

Sure there was. America. Practically a direct handoff. As far as Rome goes, there mostly wasn’t. That’s why it’s called the Dark Ages, for better or worse.

[EmperorBatman999]

Americans are finding out the hard way what happens when America withdraws from the world and politicians prioritize comfort over success. Having been to Western Europe for extended periods, this is a horrifying reality I anticipated years ago. Perusing small shelves in small shops lined with small, overpriced and less dynamic goods bought by people who make less and consume less than Americans, loitering about with higher unemployment, lower growth and spend more of their lives under their parents’ roofs, I realized just how grateful I am for American freedom and power, and our globalized economy of scale that allows us to take risks and make money for our own selves in all kinds of ways.

I shuddered to think how boring and pointless life would be if I had to live like a European, and thought about my own ancestors who chose to risk it all on a dangerous trip to the middle of nowhere in America, with no family and no connections waiting for them on the other side, rather than continue living in that place. And now here we are, our own institutions telling us to abandon the American experiment in liberty “for sustainability.” The financial and political elites are trying to crack down on crypto “for sustainability.” We’re supposed to eat bugs and plants “for sustainability.” We’re supposed to give up individual freedoms “for sustainability.” Be poorer “for sustainability.” Live like a European “for sustainability.” Are you awake yet?

It is nonetheless appropriate that the US should be drifting toward a European political and social climate as American power and dynamism declines, another symptom of the disease. We don’t need to wonder what awaits us. A look across the pond shows what was once home to the most wealthy and powerful countries ever, now doomed to indefinite stagnation, flatlined growth, a nonexistent military and a paralyzed, impotent foreign policy leading to subjugation by foreign powers. We owe it to ourselves as Americans to preserve the Revolution and our way of life against the slow death of mediocrity, and it starts with one word: “No.”

I lived in Europe as well, but I was never particularly disturbed by having maybe a few less brand choices for most products while at the grocery store. In many cases, it made my life a little easier because there was less decision pressure, and it's what allows the Trader Joe's grocery store chain to do well. Incidentally, I love shopping at TJ's.

[Lord Thesaurian]

I lived in Europe as well, but I was never particularly disturbed by having maybe a few less brand choices for most products while at the grocery store. In many cases, it made my life a little easier because there was less decision pressure, and it's what allows the Trader Joe's grocery store chain to do well. Incidentally, I love shopping at TJ's.

Yeah there was a time I considered moving permanently and teaching English on a government program for some of the reasons you mention, but with the benefit of hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t. As God Emperor Teddy said, “I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.”

[swabian]

Whether or not Biden as a person is being understimated, his Administration is pretty adamant about the things that concern me. Of which there are (among others):

- crazy high spending during a time of fragile economy

- No critique towards the FED, and joyously expectant of further "cooperation" in confluence with the obviously overbought market.

- He [Biden] wants do be the hardest spender ever. Maybe borne of admiration for Obama. Doesn't matter. He's doing it.

It's like completely moronic, smeared toddlers are working the US senate already. Those people are so genuinely stupid, it's actually dangerous for the rest of the world. Are there any congressmen left who are not senile/retarded/drugged up??

[Cyclops]

Don't cross your fingers, America imploding on itself is hilarious

Not for me. They're my country's ally and nearly all the Yanks I've met have been decent people. As Empires go they are not the worst.

Happy to laugh with and at a mate about things but I always mean it when I wish the US the best.

[Lord Thesaurian]

A commission of security and economic experts convened by Congress recommended that the U.S. take more aggressive steps to dial back commercial ties with China, warning of heightened national security risks.

The annual report from the influential U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission called for imposing restrictions on U.S. investment in China and limiting investors’ ability to buy U.S.-listed Chinese stocks.

The report, whose publication Wednesday follows a Monday virtual meeting between President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping that sought to ease U.S.-China tensions, underscores the challenges the Biden administration faces keeping its powerful adversary in check.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/panel-u...ns-11637163001

Too little too late, but a welcome development nonetheless. It is important that US institutional forces are at least beginning to acknowledge and correct the grave historical mistake of pursuing engagement over containment with the PRC. If only the USG had come to this realization in 1989 instead of 2021, the existential threat Beijing poses to most of the world would likely never have materialized without trillions of dollars in western capital and stolen tech and intellectual property that built China’s economic and military power. Engagement created this monster, and only successful containment can ever hope to put it down. Fingers crossed.

This is a template China has followed, and in its review of China’s strategies of displacement, the book argues that shifts from one strategy to the next have been triggered by sharp discontinuities in the most important variable shaping Chinese grand strategy: its perception of US power and threat. China’s first strategy of displacement (1989–2008) was to quietly blunt American power over China, particularly in Asia, and it emerged after the traumatic trifecta of Tiananmen Square, the Gulf War, and the Soviet collapse led Beijing to sharply increase its perception of US threat. China’s second strategy of displacement (2008–2016) sought to build the foundation for regional hegemony in Asia, and it was launched after the Global Financial Crisis led Beijing to see US power as diminished and emboldened it to take a more confident approach. Now, with the invocation of “great changes unseen in a century” following Brexit, President Trump’s election, and the coronavirus pandemic, China is launching a third strategy of displacement, one that expands its blunting and building efforts worldwide to displace the United States as the global leader. In its final chapters, this book uses insights about China’s strategy to formulate an asymmetric US grand strategy in response—one that takes a page from China’s own book—and would seek to contest China’s regional and global ambitions without competing dollar-for-dollar, ship-for-ship, or loan-for-loan.

https://www.brookings.edu/essay/the-...merican-order/

[alhoon]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/4-surpris...172038382.html

Not exactly promising first year for Bidet. It's those four surprises + border / separation of families like the eeeevil Trump did which Bidet didn't expect he will have to do again + Afghanistan, of course and the "You won't see evacuations from Kabul via helicopter" etc in July.

But of course, every conceivable minority is represented in government.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[chilon]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/4-surpris...172038382.html

Not exactly promising first year for Bidet. It's those four surprises + border / separation of families like the eeeevil Trump did which Bidet didn't expect he will have to do again + Afghanistan, of course and the "You won't see evacuations from Kabul via helicopter" etc in July.

But of course, every conceivable minority is represented in government.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Dear Mr. Hoons,

It has not been a good year for Biden. But since you are trolling with an image of easily the worst President in modern US history, we can see the last year has been better by quite a margin than what would have happened under another year of the crybaby who can't admit he lost an election and stoked a storming of the capitol. The handling of COVID is much better, Afghanistan was negotiated by the prior administration so that cannot be placed entirely on the Biden's team (though they also could have handled it better) and the infrastructure bill and build back better bill are improvements over the tax cuts for the rich which was the only notable legislation of the prior administration. This legislation likely could have better if not for the two senators heavily influenced by wealthy donors, Manchin and Sinema.

While the Democrats will likely follow a long historical tradition of losing seats in the midterms, we have managed to avoid a worse outcome so there is that to be relieved about. Enjoy the rest of your day posting images of a crybaby who lost the 2020 election and couldn't admit defeat, Mr. Hoons.

[alhoon]

Enjoy the rest of your day posting images of a crybaby who lost the 2020 election and couldn't admit defeat, Mr. Hoons.

Thank you, I will.