Tell a big enough lie, loud enough, and often enough and it simply must be true !
Totally correct. Though Stanley makes more sense.
All ministers, MPs or any other Labour droogs now parrot nothing but the Number 10 politburo line. It’s so boring, you have one on Today, another on W@1 and another on PM, and they are all saying the same thing, following the same script . These are fucking arseholes, not public representatives. This is very, very serious.
The poor bastard Hamish Falconer stated the truth that Starmer was in Trump arse licking mode on the Chagos issue and he got shut down 
There is some good news from the US which is that ever larger numbers of ordinary people in that country are increasingly realising that Trump tells lies.
I’ve just returned to France from spending 4 weeks in a Republican area of Virginia and 10 days in Republican Louisiana.
In his congressional address Trump claimed “Gasoline… is now below $2.30 a gallon in most states” but the people know very well that they are paying between $2.80 and $3.05 per gallon in the above states, and indeed in many others.
Folks also know that the price of their food shopping has increased markedly, and that it is still rising at what they perceive to be a fast rate, and it is the price of food and petrol that is doing considerable damage to Republican chances of re-election. Virginia for example has just elected a Democrat State Governor, and this is the sort of hard evidence that the Republican Party cannot ignore.
As a foreigner in the US, I don’t instigate politically related discussions, but I do listen to the American people talking amongst themselves. I have heard a number of people admit that they did vote for Trump, but that they regret it. The result is that although they might not actually vote for a Democrat, these former Republican voters are simply not voting at all in local and state elections.
While a lot of Americans agree that illegal immigrants should be removed from the country, they most certainly do not agree with the way the administration is going about achieving the objective.
While on this point of illegal immigrants, it would seem that the general population hasn’t quite woken up to the fact that an awful lot of fruit and veg from California, Florida, and Georgia is usually picked by said illegals working for low wages. This year’s harvest is therefore likely to be more expensive, in short supply, or both.
One troubling overall scenario common among adults in the 30 to 45 age range is that the Trump administration will somehow manage to get their way to have elections ‘supervised’ by the Federal Gov’t instead of by the individual State Governments in order to avoid a rout of the Republicans at the Mid-Term elections later this year due to voter fraud.
Trump will take the fall for the Republicans poor showing, and will then stand down due to ill health in favour of Vance.
Apparently, if a Vice President takes over as President for less than two years, then that doesn’t count as a ‘Term of Office’ and so said person could go on to serve a further two complete terms as President in their own right.
So “Oh crikey Trump” could easily morph into ‘Oh crikey Vance’ for up to 10 years.
In summation, I would say that there are an awful lot of Americans who are just waiting for the Democrats to put up even a half decent candidate at the next Presidential Election. However, the real danger is not Trump’s rantings, but that such an election may never take place.
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We can dream of those pricea here in Europe. That’s under £0.60p a litre of petrol at its highest.
Noting that a US gallon is fewer litres than the UK gallon. Though that US petrol price seems to have gone up markedly from when I was there last.
Indeed, but unfortunately such a price for petrol does come with a bit of a catch, namely healthcare.
Bearing in mind that the USA does not have a universal state funded healthcare system on can easily end up paying $450 per month for private health insurance. One might think that such a sum is not too bad, until you come to understand the ‘out of pocket’ expenses that go with the policy.
So you read the fine print and discover that the first $8,000 of health expenses is NOT covered by the health insurance and so you have to pay that out of your own pocket each year before the insurance will even think of contributing to the costs.
So if you become ill, you now have to pay the first $8,000 of costs out of your own pocket IN ADDITION to paying the $450 per month insurance premium.
Many people can’t afford to pay that 8grand per annum (by the way – it resets to zero and starts again each Jan 1st) and so they simply don’t bother to have any insurance at all. $13,400 per year is beyond a lot of peoples means. So if they become really unwell they just end up with a bill that will take them a lifetime to pay off if they ever manage it at all. Alternatively, they just stay home and die !
So, are you sure that you would still like to dream about the cheap petrol and sales tax at only 5.5% ???
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Sales tax varies by state though ISTR. 0% in some.
Fair enough on health though.
Indeed, the combination of State and local sales tax does vary quite a lot. Delaware, New Hampshire, Montana, and Oregon have no sales tax at all, but Louisiana is 10.11%, Tennessee 9.61%, and Alabama and Arkansas both have 9.46%. So it very much depends on where you live as to how much you pay.
As you get older, it gets even worse. I looked back late last year at what my wife’s (at age 64) healthcare would cost this year and the insurance was about $12K for he cheapest Bronze policy with a maximum out of pocket cost of about $10k. Since she had a chronic disease, we would have quickly spent the $10k as well- so the total would have been around $22k. We could easily afford it, but even then there are hidden costs because insurers are constantly delaying and denying coverage and sometimes youjust want things done that they don’t want to cover. It’s a horrific system. If you are working, your employer pays most of the costs, but you can be sure it comesout of your salary, even if you don’t know about it. It also keeps you tied to your employer particularly if you have a health issue. Things get slightly better once you turn 65 and get into Medicare, but to be adequately covered still costs at least $5k/yr for essentially mutuelles.
It is now obvious that Trump was not negotiating in good faith with Iran.
He promised the American people that he would not get involved in a foreign war.
Let’s see how this works out in the mid terms.
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Like many of the things Trump does, his objectives are not always perceived as bad, but his methods are frequently objectionable.
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However, there are many people who are self employed like the chap that comes to cut our grass and clean the gutters etc. He is his own employer and so is faced with paying the full insurance premium himself. If he were to pay the premium, then there is no way he could afford to pay the ‘out of pocket’ expenses as well. So he doesn’t have health insurance and just hopes that going to church on Sunday mornings will suffice.
Yes, and when he falls off a ladder and goes to the hospital without insurance, he will be treated and if he can’t pay, the costs are passed down to the taxpayers in the community. Sounds like dreaded socialism, but that is never mentioned in any of the arguments against going to a sensible system.
Of course Medicare and Medicaid are not socialised health care either ? ?
It would be so helpful if the politicians would accept that they are indeed forms of socialised care. No doubt the Insurance Company lobby would soon put a stop to any such discussion. I think one could be forgiven for thinking that the whole system is inherently corrupt.
Will Trump be demanding a Nobel War Prize soon?
I wrote and asked ChatGPT to improve.
Donald Trump is chasing a legacy by any means available. A peace deal, a grand diplomatic trophy, his name etched onto institutions and monuments - ballrooms, buildings, even the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts. Anything that signals permanence. Time is closing in, and he knows it. What drives him now is not achievement for its own sake, but the desperate pursuit of validation - a hunger for recognition he senses, perhaps, can never be fully satisfied.
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Empty G has become the voice of sanity.
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She’s right, I hope some people are still listening to her.
Well, I’m listening to her now, but the idiots have probably tuned her out.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene has said she believes in demons, surmising that they might be aliens who fell from heaven, and claims to have been unaware that key figures in the antisemitic space lasers conspiracy she floated were Jewish.”
That’s from last year. Enough to make me not listen to her. She’s a loony.
I wonder if some people in the USA have genuinely gone insane.
Start at the the top and work your way down, you won’t have to go far to reach paydirt.
It amused me today on hearing Trump’s lashing out at Starmer ‘We are not dealing with Churchill here you know’. No and we aren’t dealing with Roosevelt either, what was that he said while negotiating with the Japanese just before they bombed Pearl Harbour? ‘A Day of Infamy’ I think it was, how history repeats itself.
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