I think it’s Musk’s backers, the Russians

Given how heavily sanctioned the Russian domestic industries have been, it would be big news to discover they were doing direct business with any of Musk’s heavily-predicated-on-federal-contracts firms.

I would love to see some evidence to this effect, but it sounds like fantastic conjecture rather than reality.

That’s just how the Trumpies do business. “Give me what I want or I’m leaving” is how Trump claimed he renegotiated NAFTA and reworked the US / China trade relationship and was allegedly going to forge an Amazing Massive Incredibly Lucrative New Deal with the then-Brexit-ing UK.

Far more often than not, the renegotiation just involves bribing Trump and his immediate crony base of support in order to leave existing policies alone. That is, incidentally, how Trump left the back door to Mexico open for Chinese EV imports, despite claiming it was the bestest renegotiation of a trade deal in the history of ever.

If Vance is ever in a position of authority, there’s little doubt he’ll be at some NATO summit demanding everyone in Germany buy a copy of Hillbilly Elegy in order to get him to STFU about a pull out.

Its a race to the bottom as the police and surveillance states of the entire NATO block fill to bursting.

Vance is bitching because an American company got on the wrong side of the European security state today. Tomorrow, he’ll be clamoring to shut down the BBC or to censor some German metal band for being critical of his Dear Leader.

NYPD still haven’t produced a knife from the scene.

Distraction from what actually happened here…

The initial “he had a knife!” was a distraction, certainly. But now it brings us back to the meat of the matter - the NYPD lies on impulse about everything in order to cover their asses.

At this point, who even fucking knows if he actually jumped a turnstile or if the police just decided to chase after and harass a guy who’d legally paid his fare?

These stories will get closer and closer to you.

I’ve got family in Manhattan and Queens. Fucking horrifying to think one of them might have been caught in the middle of this. Unfortunately, my NY family cannot stop having a hard-on for the cops. Given the deluge of far-right media around the incident and the degree to which the lies of the police are embellished and added on to by even less reputable talk radio goons and social media crackpots, I doubt this will change their view of what happened.

A demon-man used his magic knife to force two police officers to shot into a crowd, and only the brave champions of law and order were able to stop him.

To win their support in the social media space and to raise oodles of crypto cash for the campaign, yes.

It doesn’t look like a large contingent up front, but wait until Mema’s Instagram feed is nothing but AI images of Tim Walz and Kamala Harris face-swapped into that picture of RFK Jr eating a dog.

Democrats are no strangers to throwing some fiery jabs themselves

Who can forget the time Tim Walz’s loose remarks inspired a series of bukaki attacks at the Gainsville IKEA?

Even during the Reconstruction Era, Indiana was both staunchly Republican and full of the KKK. And there was no shortage of racism irrespective of party in Congress during the height of the Civil War. The myth is that the Radical Republicans of the 1860s and 70s represented the party population as a whole, rather than a vocal minority within an ascendant movement that managed to squeeze in a few good reforms before Hayes sold it all down the river.

Republicans barely abolished slavery even with half the country in Time-Out. And they were crucified for it in elections to come.

My thoughts: this was not an accident. This was testing the waters.

The staff at the National Review have always been neo-confederate trash and I have no trouble believing Lowry simply uses this word on such a routine basis that it slipped out during an interview with another arch-conservative media figure.

These folks are racists and it shouldn’t be seen as surprising when they show all the symptoms of a bigoted mind.

he had been transferred out of his precinct’s traffic unit after Jeffrey Maddrey, then the chief of patrol and now the department’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, asked that he be punished.

He’s learned that the cop who got wronged can pick up $175k in taxpayer money while the cop who engaged in the corruption gets to keep climbing the seniority ladder to do this shit again.

Everybody wins!

How much money should it take for a cop to be able to open fire on a suspect?

Broadly speaking, the police shouldn’t be using lethal force unless someone’s life is at risk.

But that gets us to the “we think he might have had a knife” excuse, which is just taken at face value as Carte Blanche to do as thou wilt.

The escalation of force from “jump a turnstile” to “four police trying to surround and tase the suspect” is more tied back to the $2.90 cost. Had they simply shouted after the guy as he fled, nobody would be in the hospital right now. Instead, they went Commando Mode, and bystanders paid the price.

The problem is rooted in prison spending moving from a social cost to a private revenue stream.

It’s the classic Cobra Effect of economics. Monetizing the solution to a problem creates an incentive to increase the instances of said problem.

In this case, we have criminalized the free use of public transportation in order to justify more spending on policing.

Based

We’re not going to get United Ireland in 2024. Star Trek is a lie.

Someone get George Bush Sr on the phone and cancel the Nixon era free trade deal.

Oh wait, nevermind. Gotta have our treats.

Americans will bitch and cry about Chinese propaganda, then eat Pentagon press briefs up with a spoon and call you racist for questioning a headline.

You will never see China Coast Guard vessel helps rescue a Philippine fishing boat in distress near Huangyan Dao ora far more generic Two foreign-flagged ships collide off Corregidor Island, 2 dead. You’ll never have folks ask why these Philippine vessels are running aground and crashing into one another so often. Because that might suggest a problem with the enormously overstressed fisheries and ship channels all through the Pacific.

That might raise more general concerns about the unregulated nature of naval policy in a region dominated by private shipping companies.

So much easier to just run a parade of articles saying “Gulf of Tonkin! USS Maine!” on a loop.

I have never seen nor heard of anyone in NYC getting a ticket for jaywalking

I had a friend who got grabbed by a police officer and thrown against a wall by a NYPD officer, then arrested on the spot, for crossing outside of a designated crosswalk.

But that was during OWS, so maybe a few other political winds were involved.

Bystander injuries are on the aggressor’s hands.

Excited to see the NYPD press b charges on the turnstile jumper for the cop who shot the other cop.

With the way klansmen in Ohio fell on the local Haitian automotive workforce like ravenous hyenas, I don’t think you need more than that to turn certain people in the US absolutely feral.

Just whisper “Kamala Harris ate my dog” into the Internet and you’ll have a military parade of psycho rednecks calling for her head.