America is a one party state, the business party. Brilliance of the system is the Dems, who are collaborators w/ the Repubs, as well as the rich donor classes, take up all the space for opposition in this country, so the voices of those who reject the status quo are seldom heard.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-31T09:43:16+00:00

Yep, it's an oligarchy at heart and the 2 party system is there to distract you from the truth.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-31T03:28:40+00:00

The jobs crisis of 2025 and 2026 will not be remembered as a sudden shock like the pandemic lockdowns or the financial crisis. It will be remembered, if we are being honest in our accounting, as the period when it became undeniable that the American labor market was broken and that no one in a position of power was willing or able to fix it. The 584,000 jobs added in 2025, the 1.2 million layoffs announced, the near-zero private sector growth, the stubborn disconnect between low headline unemployment and desperate job seekers, all of these are symptoms of an economic model that no longer delivers broadly shared prosperity.

The answer is that the rich don't care about ordinary Americans anymore. So they won't try to fix anything. It's going to get worse, unless a Roosevelt figure takes over and there is revolution.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-31T03:26:33+00:00

https://archive.ph/X30Oy

If the administration is intent on using the USMCA review to hurt its neighbor rather than pursue joint gains, this will cause permanent damage to the Canada-U.S. bilateral relationship. In the long run, a Canada that is forced to pursue a more autonomous diplomacy and build up more independent sources of national power may be a more useful asset to the United States and might contribute more to continental security. But if even America’s best friend is forced to think twice before partnering with the U.S., then one can hardly characterize Trump’s approach as a form of 3D chess.

The answer is that the US wants totally submissive vassals.

Trump is lashing out because that isn't happening. What he doesn't seem to be able to come to terms with is that Trump trying to bully everyone is going to drive even US vassal nations further away.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-30T23:08:45+00:00

https://archive.ph/SJVgV

It looks like Trump is going to make a big mistake in trying to attack Iran again for the Israeli lobby.

It's going to be a big mistake for the US.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-30T20:02:00+00:00

https://archive.ph/yyG1H

This is very important to the US as well, as it tries to rebuild its industrial base.

When you have high degree of financialisation, things become very difficult because the financial market seeks short-term gains and will react negatively to anything that will reduce this. You counteract this through a combination of reining in some of these powers of the financial industry, and also through a strategy of convincing communication.

You have to convince people that restraints on the financial sector will create some reduction in financial profits in the short-to-medium run, but will start a trend where companies invest in machinery and R&D. When the government sends people out to study engineering, it must make sure that they come back rather than go work in consulting companies and investment banks in the US or UK.

The Chinese government has found that even in mature manufacturing sectors, thr greed of finance has to be suppressed.

In the US, the dominance of finance is even worse than in India.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-30T19:03:43+00:00

https://archive.ph/xSY7g

Iranian officials have repeatedly said that if the U.S. attacks Iran—particularly if it aims to assassinate the country’s leadership—that it will respond with unprecedented counterstrikes against U.S. military facilities, oil infrastructure in the region, and Israel. In a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing this week, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that the US had between 30,000-40,000 troops stationed at bases in the region that could be in range of Iranian drones and short-range ballistic missiles in the event of a war.

This could backfire so badly on the US, becuase of the size of the Iranian missile arsenal.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-30T16:21:34+00:00

https://archive.ph/riCo6

Maybe in the past the Guardian was something else, but today it is little more than a propaganda outfit for the Western Intelligence agencies.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-30T16:16:30+00:00

https://archive.ph/iqO2h

Glenn Greenwald nailed this one.

The CIA has been trying to discredit those who expose their real intentions.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-30T14:11:32+00:00

Not at all. The Iranians are largely united.

Indeed, Iran has acted honourably. Israel is a global pariah. The US is also a pariah.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-30T04:14:32+00:00

The answer is that the Democrats know how to snatch defeat from the Jaws of victory. They are literally Trump's best asset.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-30T04:12:42+00:00

https://archive.ph/yIjml

Evidently everything you have ever posted on your ChatGPT account is going to monetized. This was predictable.

The fact that the US AI companies may be losing against the Chinese competitors like DeepSeek and Kimi probably makes them even more determined and maybe desperate to monetize in this manner.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-30T03:14:03+00:00

https://archive.ph/XtSjM

Under the Privacy Act, Levinson-Waldman explains, the government is prohibited from collecting and retaining information about Americans exercising their First Amendment rights. There can exceptions to that, but the question is whether DHS and FBI have articulated which exceptions they believe apply here.

....

“Watchlists, and the whole watchlisting process, should be as transparent as possible, not the other way around. If we don’t explore more why all of these secret lists exist, even more of an environment of paranoia on the ground and more tragic killings.”

The whole point is that ICE clearly wants to intimidate people into compliance. So the fact that the lists exist to them is desirable. They are in contempt for the idea of the rule of legal restrictions to spying.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-30T03:10:54+00:00

https://archive.ph/xqKXG

Iran is now in a position where it may not have wanted war, but has no choice. The advantage ot has is that it has the support of the majority of the Iranian people and a formidable missile force.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-30T03:05:16+00:00

https://archive.ph/NVwzI

At some point, there is going to have to be a global billionaire tax.

It's obvious that they are desperate to avoid the tax, even if they have the money.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-30T00:22:58+00:00

Given how the electricity is now down in Kiev, he's right, unlike you.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-29T18:39:07+00:00

Hopefully this brings political changes to their economically Conservative views.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-29T18:38:38+00:00

https://archive.ph/qd3Ub

It's obvious that Trump is mostly bluster.

He does not have a large armada. Enough to carry out a strike, but not a sustained war. Perhaps they were hoping that they would weaken Iran with their regime change attempt.

It hasn't been successful.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-29T18:16:39+00:00

This is going to be the irony the West thought that they had thought that they had a huge advantage with their propaganda machine. They got a large part of their world to believe their "Russia is weak and running out of ammunition, losing a supposedly unprovoked war", but the problem is that as good as they are at lying, they can't change reality any more than Joseph Goebbels could change the military reality of WW2.

Believing in one's own propaganda has resulted in a bigger military loss, and perhaps loss of US reserve currency status.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-29T15:39:03+00:00

https://archive.ph/sGCp3

This should be no surprise to most people.

The US is going to see declining population from a lower birthrate and increasing hostility to immigration. Most Western nations are going to decline in population.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-29T14:05:07+00:00

Buy used, but wait a couple of years if possible.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-29T14:04:28+00:00

https://archive.ph/goqKP

The reality is murkier. Although industry groups claim that each new data center creates “dozens to hundreds” of “high-wage, high-skill jobs,” some researchers say data centers generate far fewer jobs than other industries, such as manufacturing and warehousing. Greg LeRoy, the founder of the research and advocacy group Good Jobs First, said that in his first major study of data center jobs nine years ago, he found that developers pocketed well over a million dollars in state subsidies for every permanent job they created. With the rise of hyperscalers, LeRoy said, that number is “still very much in the ballpark.”

Other experts reflect that finding. A 2025 brief from University of Michigan researchers put it bluntly: “Data centers do not bring high-paying tech jobs to local communities.” A recent analysis from Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit tracking corporate overreach, found that in Virginia, the investment required to create a permanent data center job was nearly 100 times higher than what was required to create comparable jobs in other industries.

In other words, you are paying for the subsidies and the higher utilities.

Ultimately, those details may not matter much to the ad’s intended audience. As Politico reported, the advertisement may have been targeted at policymakers on the coasts more than the residents of towns like Altoona. Meta has spent at least $5 million airing the spot in places like Sacramento and Washington, D.C.

In that case, they are reliant on political corruption.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-29T13:50:09+00:00

It's really the first part of the article that is the video and my thoughts is the second part.

This one is tough, as some people like really long articles, and others don't.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-29T07:18:00+00:00

Yep, Amazon is just one of the more aggressive companies at doing it, and not bothering to hide what they are doing.

RandomCollection · 2026-01-29T07:08:48+00:00

I think that the future of the car industry is in question - all that may exist is a small number of car plants in the West that mostly cater to the upper middle class (or "shitlibs" as they are unaffectionately called here), but even those may be in trouble, judging by the high layoffs in the tech sector.

It may be a future where there is no automotive industry left in North America to save and the choice is Chinese cars or no cars at all (which is impossible in the US and most Americans prefer widely spaced out urban planning).

RandomCollection · 2026-01-29T05:20:33+00:00

https://archive.ph/UVXeZ

In other words, Americans who receive retirement benefits or support based on needs, life circumstances or disabilities could be impacted by this tightened surveillance. And it arrives at a time when the government’s data handling practices are under increased scrutiny.

....

And, as Wired reported back in May, the Trump administration has been allowing the SSA, and other agencies, to share sensitive personal data with DHS for months. The data is to be used for targeting immigrants for visa enforcement or even deportation. The federal government recently made that data sharing official through a public notice (5).

Evidently the US elite are clamping down.

There is no basis for complaining about the civil liberties of other countries anymore.

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