Propaganda is telling Americans for 4 years that their president is healthy, brilliant, and sharp, while they themselves see a fading grandpa who can't function on his own.
Which leads people to not trust anything else the same media tells them. And then they start wondering about who actually is the president... Is it Jill or someone whose name they don't even recognize? And they get real angry at being taken for a fool, and vote accordingly.
The last election was lost by the Dems rather than won by Trump.
This article is yet another example of how this happens.
I agree. Most (though not all!) Dems serve as tools of the owning class. That's the "largely unchallenged" part of my post, Dems are paid to be an ineffective opposition. The owning class circles the wagons when a real opposition movement (DSA, BDS, BLM, OWS) starts to poke its head up, and you see Dems, Reps, and the billionaire-owned media all working together to keep it down.
Folks on places like HN should also realize that the broader US is not as liberal as the news and internet would make you think. The people who comment and debate online tend to be on the more extreme ends of both sides.
The rest of us (wisely or not) feel like it's typically not worth the energy to get involved.
And yet, the words that come out of Trump's mouth show significant mental decline, but he's given a pass because the words are spoken somewhat energetically, sometimes.
Interestingly, the article begins with mentioning Hunter's activities in Ukraine, and implies that nothing improper happened there. Any honest observer would certainly think that a Ukrainian energy firm hiring Biden Jr to consult for major $$$ on matters he knows nothing about, while his father is the U.S. President's pointman in Ukraine, is clearly a shady deal.
The article should be about how both presidents are being corrupt, but we get this.
it's a very poor argument anyway: "oh biden did bad thing too". Okay, so you're admitting it's a bad thing first of all. Second, how does someone else doing a bad thing make it any LESS bad for others to do it?
That's really disingenuous. Clearly Biden Jr. was getting paid more than he would have but he probably did have unique insights that would be worth quite a bit of money to Burisma. But the accusation is just that he made a few $100k more than he would have and made some top-level connections (so the money actually seems sensible). Every well read person just takes these things at face value as a single individual fallling up - but he had no true secrets to give and no real power. The corruption within the Trump admin is expansive with hundreds of millions of dollars across multiple businesses and at least in the first administration real power vested in family members.
Trying to what-about this just shows that you're either being deceitful or don't understand the differences. Biden Jr. was taking advantage of his dad's position - and everything seems to point that Biden Sr. was not involved and didn't really want to be invovled. The Trump family is all in and everyone is involved trying to grift as much as possible, including the President.
I tried to figure out the same, it seems to me that the issue is that US drivers licenses have historically been kinda shitty, with very little validation done to ensure the identity of the person that the licens is issued to. There's also some requirement about the drivers database being available across states, which apparently it wasn't previously.
Without knowing, my take is that it's one of those cases where each state has behaved more like individual countries, rather than a subdivision of a larger nation. So you drivers licens isn't really worth much out of state, at least not for validating your actual identity.
I could be wrong, it seems very unclear what Real ID actually is.
It's trying to solve a bunch of different, slightly overlapping problems. Some examples:
* provide an identity document that's hard to forge. Some states, Hawaii famously, had IDs that were ridiculously easy to forge.
* reduce expiration times so that identifying details aren't decades out of date. Some states (e.g. Arizona) issued IDs with 50+ years of validity.
* require actual verification of identity at issuance
* include SSN details. I have no idea why this was a thing and it's since been removed from the actual federal requirements, but most states require original social security documents to be provided during application.
* to establish residency at a particular address.
If it were just identity and residency, states would accept things like voter registration as sufficient. Yet many states (e.g. California) do not.
The SSN details weren’t true in MA. My card was lost at some point in college and I never bothered to replace. Probably should one of these years.
Not sure what proof of voter registration would look like here though. Proof of resident address can actually be non-trivial for a lot of even housed people. I probably have some online bills and statements but would have to dig them up.
The state level variability is fun. I know it's required for CA from personal experience, and checked TX, FL before posting. Also checked NY (talk about bad documentation). All require it currently.
Some states also don't like accepting online bills. That's the reason I wasn't able to ever get one in CA.
I suspect it became more standardized than it used to be. My original PA drivers license was a bit of index stock with no photo. Things have obviously changed but states, as I understand it? Still had significantly different verification requirement and varying degrees of information sharing. RealID isn’t quite a backdoor to an (unacceptable to most)national ID but it probably comes close.
This is the typical US confusion of a license and an ID. Licenses were not originally intended to be ID.
Until someone decided that only people over 21 could drink, and that we needed strong controls over ID. And most people had drivers licenses, so that is what they said they would need for a document
Real ID is more about standardization of the minimum bar than a specific new improvement. What the actual changes are from before depends on the state/territory you look at and what they used to do. You can read about the specific checks required here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_ID_Act#Provisions
The main difference is that the record is added to a federal database. The actual ID is pretty much the same. There is some effort to make all the states' IDs look similar in terms of layout. At low-traffic airports if you're from a low-population state the person looking at your ID might not have seen one today.
The man in the linked article did not display any signs or symbols, did not engage in speech, and did not "express" himself. If standing solemn is an arrestable offense, then anyone doing anything is subject to arrest. The police may think fascist thoughts are running through any random person's mind at this very moment.
You should be upset at the government that gave the money and that didn't do the due diligence to make sure it's used for proper cause.
Secondly, it should be reconsidered that giving billions to profit making corporations so that they can make more money is a good idea.
It seems this will be a way for Ukraine to pay for its defense, since Europe is not willing to cover the cost and the US is no longer willing to do it either.
It also puts countries that live under the US umbrella in a position to start thinking about their own security.
For Ukraine this seems like a win, allowing them to defend themselves at the cost of things underground that they haven't cared to touch, all while receiving protection from the US.
The money the US sent to Ukraine in relation to its defense is then in turn spent with US military companies. It's a wash deal.
But by sending said money, the US is extending soft (semi-hard) power in the region. This advances US interests.
By essentially trying to blackmail Ukraine however, you make it clear to all other parties that the US is not an entity that can work in good faith. Additionally, by leveraging US private sector tech (Starlink), you're telling others not to integrate US technology if at all possible, hurting the market for US business. We're essentially doing what we accused Hwuawei of doing.
The Trump administration seems to be of the belief that they don't have work with anyone, but that others should work for them. Nothing about this is in the US's best interest. This is foreign policy folly.
The USA and Europe are on par when it comes to military aid to Ukraine, both with around 62bn EUR. The US spent 45bn EUR on other aid, while Europe spent 70bn.
I didn't mention this topic. The issue is that neither Europe nor US are currently willing to allocate the resources necessary for Ukraine to win. Whatever, whoever, gave in the past is irrelevant now.
EU funds are contributed by more than 27 countries, none of whose individual contribution comes close to what US has contributed.
According to official gov website of EU and US
* EU has allocated $145b + $50b[1]
* US has allocated $174b [2]
$500b is too much but considering how Ukraine has been losing valuable resources to Russia, it's only fair to ask for some security. According to your article, this was the "Victory Plan" all along and Zelensky agreed to it.
A huge amount of American aid sent to Ukraine isn't worth anything. Some of it is Vietnam-era surplus that hadn't been trashed yet. Some of it is Cold War era surplus that would have been trashed too if not donated.
As an American taxpayer, I don't feel a need to squeeze Ukraine over paying for American trash. Maybe they should pay list price for the new toys like the Patriot, but not our reserve equipment. That's plain extortion.
Apparently they're using some kind of broad spectrum systems in Ukraine that modulate across a wide range of frequencies at the same time, making it hard to jam them.
This article is yet another example of how this happens.