Debt Rattle July 6 2025

 

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  • #191497

    Johannes Vermeer View of Delft 1660-61   • Iran Moved Its Enriched Uranium Before US Strikes – Seymour Hersh (RT) • Musk Unveils ‘America Party’
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle July 6 2025]

    #191501
    those darned kids
    Participant

    “Jesus Christ saved President Trump for a reason”

    yep!

    monster island will definitely need someone with fry serving experience.

    #191502
    those darned kids
    Participant

    “When are they going to prison?”

    #191503
    those darned kids
    Participant

    When are they going to prison?

    #191504
    those darned kids
    Participant

    When are they going to prison!?

    #191505
    those darned kids
    Participant

    When are they going to prison!?

    #191506
    those darned kids
    Participant

    @RobertKennedyJr is right.

    no, RobertKennedyJr is a fraud.

    the prep act is still in effect – all else is kayfabe.

    #191507
    those darned kids
    Participant

    “he truly loves his country. Just like Trump.”

    uh, mr chrump loves mr chrump.

    america is just another tool mr chrump uses for his self-promotion.

    mr chrump loves mr chrump.

    #191508
    zerosum
    Participant

    Deaf/Selective Hearing/Lies&Secrets

    Truth
    Gaza
    Ukraine
    Iran
    Russia
    Israel
    Abuse of Power
    Justice
    Economy – waste, fraud and abuse, sanctions
    ———–
    • Bush’s, Obama’s ‘Farewell’-Style Wishes for USAID Staff (DS)

    ————–
    • Here’s How Conservatives Can Keep the Momentum Going (Margolis)

    —————

    #191509
    Topcat
    Participant

    .

    #191510
    Topcat
    Participant

    • Oh La La… Putin Drops Truth Bomb On Macron

    #191511
    Topcat
    Participant

    No one arrested yet for the crimes too numerous to list

    Maybe we don’t need them arrested

    There are alternatives…..

    #191512
    Topcat
    Participant

    Bush’s, Obama’s ‘Farewell’-Style Wishes for USAID Staff

    #191513
    Topcat
    Participant

    Lights Out, Europe: The Cost of Brussels’ Energy Fantasy

    #191514
    Topcat
    Participant

    Media Whores Just Keep Hoing

    They are just stepping on the face of a spineless populous

    It’s their Raison D’être

    .

    #191515
    zerosum
    Participant

    Follow the money

    The right way is the way we were taught.
    The wrong way is Tariffs.
    The wrong way is deficit spending.

    #191516
    zerosum
    Participant

    https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/the-empty-case-for-canadas-five-percent-defence-pledge

    The empty case for Canada’s 5% defence pledge
    Why the world’s most powerful military organization needs to more than double its expenditure remains completely unexplained

    Paul Robinson

    The priorities of our political leaders can be very hard to understand. Western countries are suffering years of economic stagnation, deteriorating public services, increasing popular distrust in political institutions, and a host of other problems. Yet our governments have decided that what we really need to do is spend more money on defence—and not just more money, but a lot, lot more money than what we are spending at present.

    For NATO countries have agreed that they should spend not just the two percent of GDP they had previously pledged on defence—a target which many of them, including Canada, had notably failed to meet—but five percent. But why the world’s most powerful military organization needs to more than double its expenditure, and why it has picked on this suspiciously round number, remains completely unexplained, perhaps because it is in fact unexplainable.

    Defence spending makes no sense in the absence of a threat, and it would seem that the underlying logic of NATO’s new policy is that it faces a serious threat from the Russian Federation. Certainly, no other potential enemy nowadays occupies quite so much attention. But Russia hardly justifies NATO’s proposed spending increases, as can be seen by a simple comparison of modern Russia with the Soviet Union of 40-50 years ago.

    In the early 1980s, the Soviet army was positioned in the middle of Germany, about 1,500 kilometres to the west of where the Russian army is today. Backed by its allies in the Warsaw Pact, it enjoyed a significant advantage over NATO. Nowadays, by contrast, not only has the border between Russia and NATO moved far to the east, but the Russian army is a faint shadow of the size and power of its Soviet predecessor. Meanwhile, NATO has gotten a lot large, absorbing most of the former members of the Warsaw Pact. But, according to NATO’s own official figures, from 1975 to 1984 NATO members spent on average only 4.7 percent of GDP on defence, in other words less than they are now promising to spend over the next decade.

    And so we have a situation in which a much stronger NATO faces a much weaker Russia than it did 40-50 years ago, but somehow we are to believe that the situation requires a higher level of defence spending. Canada, it should be noted, spent on average 1.9 percent of GDP on defence in the period 1975-1984. Yet now we have promised to spend five percent—more than two and half times what we spent at the height of the Cold War. It is hard to see how this makes sense.

    In any case, linking defence spending to GDP is nonsensical, as well explained by Robert Higgs of the libertarian Independent Institute. Higgs notes that GDP measures everything that a country produces in a given year, from hamburgers to computer software and nuclear bombs. If you produce more hamburgers next year, your GDP goes up, and so if you have linked defence spending to GDP, you have to spend more on defence. But there is no reason why you should spend more on defence just because you are eating more hamburgers. To make sense, defence spending has to be linked to needs, not to GDP.

    A proper defence policy thus begins with an evaluation of a country’s interests and the threats to those interests. From this evaluation, the country can develop a strategy to defend itself against the identified threat, and once it has developed this strategy, it can draw conclusions about its defence needs—how many military personnel it needs, what sort of weapons it needs, and so on. And once it has done that, it can then work out how much it is all going to cost. The budget is thus the last step in a rational defence planning process. NATO’s five percent spending pledge instead makes it the first step. As Higgs says, this is “nonsense for budget-policy making.”

    If NATO’s five percent figure was the product of such a rational planning process, one could defend it, but it is not. NATO has definitively not carried out a comprehensive review of its interests, the threats to those interests, the required strategy, and the force structure required to implement this strategy. It has simply plucked the number five percent out of the sky for no apparent reason other than that it’s a number that Donald Trump came up with and everybody wants to make him happy. Again, this is a nonsensical way to draw up policy.

    If NATO hasn’t gone through a proper planning process to justify its stance, neither have its individual members. Canada certainly hasn’t. Until recently the big debate here was whether our country should spend two percent of GDP, and even among defence boosters two percent was seen as a desirable figure. But now, without any explanation, we are pledged to spend more than twice that. The Canadian government has produced no plan to justify this dramatic change. It has not said what strategy the extra money will be meant to implement, nor what weapons and force structure the money will be used to produce. What is all this money meant to do? We do not know. For there is no plan. None at all.

    The situation in some other countries is perhaps even worse in that they have attempted to come up with a plan but are now blatantly contradicting it. On June 2, for instance, the United Kingdom, published a strategic defence review which concluded that the UK should increase defence spending to 2.5 percent of GDP by 2027, with the possibility of a further increase to three percent should economic circumstances permit. Yet now, just three weeks later, the British government, has thrown the review out of the window and declared that it will spend twice as much as previously promised. Was the review completely wrong? Has something changed so dramatically in the past three weeks as to justify doubling the spending target? The British government isn’t saying. It’s more than a little preposterous.

    How to explain all this? I suspect that group dynamics have a lot to do with it. Left to their own devices, hardly any leader of any NATO country would agree to spend five percent on defence, or anything close to that. Put them all together, however, and nobody wants to be the odd one out who is rocking the boat. Consequently, they all end up agreeing to something that it is palpable nonsense, and that most of them know they won’t be responsible for enacting anyway, given the limited amount of time that they spend in office. And here we come to what’s wrong with NATO. In theory, NATO doesn’t decide anything, its members do. But the very existence of NATO changes individual members’ behaviour in such a way as to encourage absurd collective outcomes. Were these outcomes relatively harmless, this might not be too concerning, but they are not. Excess defence spending brings with it considerable risks, encouraging reckless and counterproductive military activities. If one wonders why NATO bombed Yugoslavia and intervened in Afghanistan, it was in large part because it could, just as the US bombed Iran (and many other places for that matter) in part because it could. Military power that isn’t required to defend oneself tempts one into dangerous adventures.

    Defence spending needs thorough justification. Perhaps we should spend five percent of GDP on defence, but we can’t know that unless a proper process is followed that produces that number. As it is, we have a figure pulled out of thin air that bears no relation to actual needs and runs the risk of producing an inflated military-industrial sector that may push our country, and others, in undesirable directions. In the meantime, other, arguably much more vital, societal needs will suffer as money is pumped into the military. As President Eisenhower so rightly pointed out, the opportunity costs of defence spending are as high as the costs themselves:

    Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. … This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

    #191517
    those darned kids
    Participant

    hey!

    i’ve got a new ideology.

    it blends “organise” with “ism”.

    it’s called “ORGISM”

    what do you think!?

    #191518
    kultsommer
    Participant

    So, it’s very valuable on this date, to realize that from time to time, from generation to generation, thousands of Americans have fought to protect the ideas of the American Revolution and the United States itself. And on this July 4th, we need to give them a due. And remember what they did, who they were, and why they did it.

    I thought that Veteran’s day is for that?

    Missions like this fall into cry-narrative above too?

    When the active-duty Air Force and Missouri Air National Guard bomber crews who attacked the Fordow uranium enrichment plant in Iran went to work on June 20, they kissed their loved ones goodbye, not knowing when or if they’d be home.

    #191519
    Noirette
    Participant

    Oh the vid of Trumpy from Maga Voice (at top post) – brilliant, v. well done.

    Today, though, as focussed on personalia — setting aside foreign policy, the BBTB (big beautiful tax bill) re. internal struggles – …

    There is no First Lady in the TrumpAdmin II.

    Imho DT and Melania are separated, Idk where she lives, but the job, official function, is unoccupied.

    (Maybe a first in US history?)

    The First Daughter – Ivanka – and her spouse, Jared Kushner, are also AWOL.

    As for the other children, idk what they are doing, in any case not reported in international news.

    DT is isolated, lonely, no wife, no children, no family support / interest.

    Blumenthal (I am not a fan) says that Trump is being deliberately isolated, not given proper info, etc. He states that S. Wiles (chief of Staff) worked previous for Netanyahu.

    https://tinyurl.com/ym9chvwp

    #191520

    Stayin’ alive.

    #191521
    kultsommer
    Participant

    Breaking news.
    After the tik-tok backlash, Trader Joe’s store’s cashiers stopped asking the customers “What are their plans for today?” cashiers of Stater Bros took over.
    Corporate world offering the illusion of genuine care – and Amers swallowing it with gusto.

    While on it, here is the tale of creating the foundation of modern educational program:

    #191522
    kultsommer
    Participant

    Three branches of the government. To check on each other.
    Fine.
    Then.
    Israel and domestic 2%, somehow, got into the mix,

    #191523
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    Sunscreen, et al.

    I researched sunscreen when my kids were babies. I purchase only specific ones marketed for babies that I have researched. Even that sunscreen is used sparingly. It is obnoxious when others use highly toxic spray on sunscreen in enclosed spaces (such as pool changing rooms), which is in violation of the instructions on the can!

    People have to be responsible for “doing their own research” — and that does not mean possessing their own lab. It often means doing research to determine which “experts” are trusted and which are ignored. I don’t expect the government to always give the correct or best advice. I appreciate it when government is genuinely attempting to give correct/best guidance because that is one of its purposes.

    Government mandates, on the other hand, are often truly diabolical, as they abrogate individual choice.

    My sister did her own research about vaccines before having children. None of her six kids are vaccinated. I did not do systematic research about vaccines until my kids were pre-teens and Gardasil was the next one up. My kids did not receive that one, nor any others since.

    I do not believe that it is my place to impede someone from getting a Covid vax who desires one. If the trial for the new Covid vax proceeds with integrity, it will document a myriad of problems with it. These can be collated into a brief literature pamphlet (or informative video) that can be required to receive (or watch) prior to vaccination. Last week my daughter had her wisdom teeth removed. The oral surgeon would only do it under “deep sedation” due to the complexity of the procedure. I had to sign a form that acknowledged that “death” was a possible outcome of deep sedation. She has undergone general anesthesia thrice before. The insurance company had decided only the bottom two teeth were “bad enough” to warrant extraction, so I paid out of pocket for the uppers. I decided that while the insurance company was willing to wait a couple of years until the uppers were “bad enough” to also be removed, I didn’t want my daughter to undergo deep sedation — risking death — more times than needed.

    Life is about taking risks. Individuals must be ultimately responsible for the risks that they take. Individuals are also responsible for not bothering to do sufficient research — I can’t undo the fact that my children received all of the early vaccines then on The Schedule, because I trusted “common sense” and the government, rather than researching the issue. Neither should we prevent others from taking Covid vaccines…however, government should desist from any sort of mandate and from using the phrase “safe and effective” which was always completely bogus.

    #191524
    kultsommer
    Participant
    #191525
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    Ah, Elon Musk

    It often creates problems when one’s whims and desires cannot be tempered with limits. Financial constraints often create these limits. Since his financial constraints are minimal, he makes spur-of-the-moment decisions and runs with them. Sometimes, this is brilliant. Sometimes, it is not so brilliant. I don’t know which the “America Party” will be. Musk does not have the personality to match Trump in public.

    Regardless, the situation will be colorful.

    #191526

    When dynasties acted as royalty in tentacled realms,
    ‘Til the octopus gripped them as greed fogged the helms,
    They danced in the distance, all bathed in the glow of the past,
    Applauding what was- as if all that was pleasant would last.

    #191527

    The name “America Party” is clumsy; awkward.
    Party America! would be better.
    : )

    #191528

    Consent by default. Opt out, not opt in.
    Capture my time in a game I can’t win.
    Passive existence is their violin.
    Active resistance is where to begin.

    Or Clown Party. I’m almost afraid to ask…Is there a robot clown out there in cartoon land?

    #191529
    citizenx
    Participant

    Jesus Christ saved President Trump for a reason…

    …he truly loves his country. Just like Trump.

    No more trump kool aid for ewe…no don’t drink the cologne either.

    trump has put (((Israel))) genociders and the (((J))) runt dictator of Ukraine well before America.
    You cover this everyday…why are you being retarded? Cult of trump got you.

    Pick up chalk, find a board and write-
    trump is a lying hypocrite x1000

    TAE got lockdowns as good, masks protecting you from virus, and pcr testing accuracy 1000% wrong.
    But tae worships trump. Just stop, you’re embarrassing yourself and losing all credibility.
    Why support the propaganda?

    So, when are you pussies going to revolt?

    It begins with the mind and heart. Be smart about it if you wish to live for another days fight.
    Surrounded by cult leftists, every day living is an internal revolt of their propagandizing agenda.
    Republicans have not done dick for this Nation either, sure as fuck will not fight for those cowards.

    Team America ?
    Bullshit.

    #191530
    aspnaz
    Participant

    zerosum said

    The empty case for Canada’s 5% defence pledge

    Defence is a black hole where – for national security reasons – nothing gets properly audited, nothing gets the usual “value for money” constraints, and a lot of the money seems to go missing with nobody knowing where it went. With the west in decline, what better way for the super rich to steal the last few coins from government. It is corruption, pure and simple, it has nothing to do with defending anything.

    #191531
    aspnaz
    Participant

    The sick west: My wife noticed that there was a documentary on Netflix about Madeleine McCann, the little girl who went missing in Portugal while on holiday. She asked me if I had heard of the story. The British and European media went crazy over this one girl who went missing; the same media that today produces this documentary and is ignoring the deaths of similar children in Gaza. You have to wonder how these people explain the world to themselves, how their pretend emotions work for McCann but not for darker children in foreign lands being massacred by their own government.

    The west is very sick, it is showing us the depravity of modern humans; the fact that this documentary is on netflix is itself a sign of the west’s depravity, ignoring their current ongoing crimes by pretending that they cared about some similar-to-Gaza little girl 20 years ago. The completely overhyped McCann case shows that it is all about the story, even at the time all the other missing children were ignored, in the same way as the Jimmy Sville rapes of mentally handicapped children in hospitals was ignored by the likes of Starmer. Sick, sick bastards.

    #191532
    jb-hb
    Participant

    There’s America and Americans- who have the BY FAR best revolution ever. The only one that really works. The one that has people flee TO it instead of AWAY FROM it.

    …and then you have the parasitic blob attached to it.

    Hating America is like hating someone fighting a salmonella infection because you don’t like diarrhea.

    Yes it is embarrassing. Dehydrating and debilitating.

    But this is the first thing and last thing you think to do, give your sympathies to the villain, beat the victim along side them – yeah, and ANOTHER thing!

    Meanwhile, our free speech and gun ownership rights are beating every other nation at this point. Even WITH all the continual efforts at repression. We can still mock the UK for jailing grandmothers for tweets while shielding and hiding rapists. It’s been full-on carpet bombing freedom in the West and we’re slow walking it as much as we possibly can. Please do make the argument that NZ, China, the UK are doing better. We can all use some comedy these days.

    #191533
    jb-hb
    Participant

    The west is very sick

    You’re pointing at the parasite.

    The West is Thomas Jefferson, JRR Tolkien, Cathedrals, The Geneva Convention, Richard Feynman, Albrecht Durer, Epictetus, Magna Carta, Mozart, Dickens, and a million other good and great things, all of which that parasite would love to completely devour.

    It is telling that you point at the parasite and react by condemning the West.

    #191534
    aspnaz
    Participant

    jb-hb said

    You’re pointing at the parasite.And what is the parasite?

    Explain. What is this parasite that you mention. How does America defy blame, despite shouting from the rooftops that it is the leader of the free world; leader for glory, hiding under the bed for responsibility?

    #191535
    aspnaz
    Participant

    jb-hb said

    There’s America and Americans- who have the BY FAR best revolution ever.

    The French revolution; they killed their oppressors. The Chinese revolution;they killed their oppressors. The American revolution, they just changed their oppressors. Rah rah America, I get it, you are dying and nationalism and happy memories are all you have left. The people who created the west are a different breed of people and are long gone. Some would say your old oppressors have taken control over you yet again, but they are also not the same breed.

    #191536
    jb-hb
    Participant

    Confessing an affinity for the kind of continental revolutions that fail after much waste and bloodshed should embarrass you. You cannot realize how de-pantsing yourself you are right now.

    The Chinese revolution;they killed their oppressors.

    Mao was such a genius – boosting Chinese industry through “cottage industry” – forcing everyone with useful implements to melt them down to make awful, broken, non-useful implements. Country wide. While starving.

    30 million dead by that alone. Big brain stuff us Americans wouldn’t culturally understand no doubt.

    And tormenting all free-thinkers. Before killing quite a lot of them. An example to us all. And I say that with total sincerity.

    Weird that you responded to an invitation to match up Chinese free speech and gun rights with the US and only talked about fighting “oppressors” all 150 million of them if you count ALL the Communists.

    It’s almost like you think you can murder and steal on an industrial scale if you just say the word “oppressor”

    #191537
    citizenx
    Participant

    Meanwhile, our free speech and gun ownership rights are beating every other nation at this point. Even WITH all the continual efforts at repression. We can still mock the UK for jailing grandmothers for tweets while shielding and hiding rapists.

    1st and 2nd amendments are being raped hard by our uniparty govt.
    Wa state has damn near abolished the 2nd, Colorado is trying the same along with many other states.
    What has the “supreme” court done to protect the 1st and 2nd? Not a f’ing thing.
    We saw censorship cancel culture metastasizing these past years…while the bulk of US citizens either applaud or become spineless cowards. We the people in the US are fat fucking bloated do nothing pussies.

    It’s been full-on carpet bombing freedom in the West and we’re slow walking it as much as we possibly can. Please do make the argument that NZ, China, the UK are doing better.

    Slow walking or crawling ourselves into slavery?
    Leftists want to be raped and governed harder by daddy/mommy govt…then (((they))) take to the streets and destroy shit. The rightist “patriots” do nothing while the surveillance state and patriot act squeeze harder. The line in the sand WAS crossed during covid… when will the rightists stand up and fight back? trump is part of the scam problem, not the savior.

    Arguing that we in America have a bigger crumb to eat, that our govt masters allow us- more than other Nations tiny crumbs- points directly to the reality that citizens will fold into slavery without a fight. Complacent apathy accepting self slavery is nothing to celebrate.
    Americas independence as a sovereign Nation is gone.

    We’ll be fighting in the streets
    With our children at our feet
    And the morals that they worship will be gone
    And the men who spurred us on
    Sit in judgment of all wrong
    They decide and the shotgun sings the song

    Change, it had to come
    We knew it all along
    We were liberated from the fold, that’s all
    And the world looks just the same
    And history ain’t changed
    ‘Cause the banners, they all flown in the last war

    I’ll move myself and my family aside
    If we happen to be left half-alive
    I’ll get all my papers and smile at the sky
    For I know that the hypnotized never lie
    Do you?

    There’s nothing in the street
    Looks any different to me
    And the slogans are effaced, by-the-bye
    And the parting on the left
    Is now the parting on the right

    And the beards have all grown longer overnight

    I’ll tip my hat to the new Constitution
    Take a bow for the new revolution
    Smile and grin at the change all around
    Pick up my guitar and play
    Just like yesterday
    Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
    We don’t get fooled again
    Don’t get fooled again
    No, no

    Yeah
    Meet the new boss
    Same as the old boss

    #191538
    jb-hb
    Participant

    Your through-line from French Revolution to Communist China was awesome

    #191539
    citizenx
    Participant

    Mao and the cultural revolution taught the world that you do not need a tyrannical govt to have a tyrannical society. The citizens terrorized themselves and each other- much like here during covid and the “woke” cultural revolutionists dei insanity.

    What or who will save America and restore freedom?
    People have become slaves to their phones and tech toys.
    Human behavior has become weak and psychologically broken beyond 1984 and Brave New World.

    This is not the world I would choose to live in, or the people I would choose to be surrounded by.
    We supposedly have a choice…look what our Nations people choose. Its pathetic.

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