Winston Churchill would be absolutely ashamed of Keir Starmer.

I’m not going to keep going on beyond this and bore everyone, but yes it’s extremely complicated to request extra money for anything in the fed system because of how many checks and balances there are, especially if it’s over $50k annually and has to go to the Minister in Ottawa for approval and NO there are multiple ways not to lose funding even if you don’t spend everything OR reallocate overages to other programs that overspent so they’re not underwater without it affecting your subsequent budget year.

If you want to keep believing otherwise, that’s your prerogative, but I’m telling you that’s not how it works in any responsible department. “March Madness” is a thing of the past to any agency unless it’s run by absolute dinosaurs willfully circumventing treasury board policies.

https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/aW47AN2_460s.jpg
https://img-comment-fun.9cache.com/m...B1e_700w_0.jpg

To me, it seems like JD Vance was the idiot to blame for this debacle. He had a very aggressive tone to start with and really set off the orange retard. Whatever THAT was, it wasn’t diplomacy nor did they have any consideration for the hundreds and thousands of dead Ukrainian boys.

Z can’t concede his country like that. They would have all died for nothing then. How absolutely appalling behaviour for a world leader.

I hope so too, but Trump was put into and is allowed to stay in that position because there are a large number of powerful people in the US government who have the same thinking.

Zelenskyy's new Bugatti will have to wait it looks like.

It's worth noting that Russian media was in that meeting but the AP and Reuters were not. In addition, that cheap shot about him not wearing a suit came from the boyfriend of Majorie Taylor Greene. There's some reason to believe that this was a setup.

I didn't find Zelensky's challenge in the meeting to be any different than what Macron did (Starmer also corrected Trump on the facts too but on milder things). It's hard to deal with liars who change their stories all the time.

The difference in the way Trump responded to Macron, Starmer, and Zelensky is obvious. Trump already knew Macron from his first term, and had some amount of respect for him. Plus Macron has a way with people -- international leaders. Remember that he is the one who have had repeated 1-on-1 talks with Putin as the tension mounted before the official start of the Russo-Ukrainian war.

The UK has been a steadfast junior partner to the US for many years now, so it is easy to conclude that Trump will view Starmer / UK, as someone that will fall in line with his commands -- basically the leader of a subordinate state. So he just told Starmer to shut up much like any bossy administrator would to his subordinates.

And then there is Zelensky. Trump obviously believes he is the one holding all the cards over Zelensky and Ukraine. (He said that out loud multiple times.) So he doesn't have any respect for him, and the result is what we got.

We all know Trump is a bully that only respects power. The behaviour we saw is not at all surprising.

I'm not so sure this will all end with Trump, the damage he's done already, and will do over the next 4 years will likely change the direction of the world for our lifetime.

The way the Republican party has completely capitulated to him, the media, the CEOs that were so quick to kiss the ring, I truly think we've "crossed the Rubicon" so to speak.

The future is going to look a lot different than that we grew up into, much more volatile, more unrest, Trump is simply a reflection of that.

This doesn't go away when he's gone.

An underlying item that is only really getting discussed now is military spending and how even the 2% of GDP number that has been a NATO commitment isn't actually enough to be on a war footing for most countries. The EU is acknowledging that if the US does stop supporting Ukraine that they'd have a very hard time with backfilling that support - there are weapon systems (like air defence) that they simply lack and the supply chains aren't in place to ramp up production of things like ammunition.

The US spends about 3% of their GDP on the military but they've been above that for 60-80 years so they've built up enormous reserves of weaponry - both ammo and the machines of war. They are one of the very few nations (China) that can actually go to war with another country (or two) (they are certainly the best trained).

It should be no stretch of the imagination that NATO ends up fighting a two front war in the next couple years - Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the US' invasion of Canada. Let's not pretend it's just talk, we know the kind of person Trump is now.

I'm very skeptical of any "hot" war between the US and Canada, I doubt we'd ever see that happen, in fact very doubtful.

We're in a period of late stage capitalism, growth is needed to make this system work in a world of finite resources. We knew the US would come knocking on Canada's door eventually, a country rich in resources but small in overall population, and infrastructure to access those resources.

What we're seeing now is just that, it's just happening sooner than we expected. Expect them to put economic pressure on us on concede to shitty trade deals, and the opening up of Canadian industry to American interests.

The Conservative Party of Canada is merely a conduit to those American goals. We're already selling off public entities to US companies, LifeLabs for example, the company that handles the majority of diagnostic services in our universal healthcare system in this country was sold to an American entity (Quest) last year for roughly over a billion dollars. Alberta is moving towards privatizing hospitals, a move that will also benefit American entities looking to expand and grow their networks. Expect that in other industries and sectors within this country.

This is a "soft" annexation of industry and goods within Canada, people should be aware of that.

Yeah but trannies!

There is no way the US could take over and control Canada. Right now we have Canadians fighting in Ukraine. Even if .5% decided to fight back they would be fucked.

I do believe it's inevitable that we sell off our resources to American corporations or at least become more under the influence of American decisions. But doing it this hostile and with this guy at the helm is not the ideal way to have it happen.

I think the least likely thing to happen (but possible) is a military invasion across our border but a plausible scenario is a battle for the Arctic - a clear shipping route and lots of resources up for grabs. Canada is in no position to defend our rights up there while Russia is just sitting there knowing the US is aligned with them and the US can submarine their way into our waters and effectively demand control of our Arctic and there'd be nothing we can do about it leaving nearly all of the Arctic controlled by Russia.

What could the UN or NATO do if the US came into our waters and took control? Issue statements and resolutions condemning it? Nobody is sending their subs to kick the Americans (or Russians) outs.

If that happens, RS take up arms and we invade Pt Roberts. Start of WW3

I know someone on RS that has a bullet proof truck. We can use it to ram thru the boarder.

They will be fighting for daddy musk though.

Uh, RS militia assemble?

Geriatric RS Militia.

Marco Rubio claiming the "extraordinary opportunities" of investing in Russia :lol

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/01/busin...ntl/index.html

These people are so predictable, money obsessed scums of the earth. You know it was only a matter of time after the sanctions and the collapse of the Russian economy that these monied assholes would be sniffing around looking to get richer.

It's so crazy how mask off these people are -- Rubio used to be a policy hawk who called Putin a "thug", now he's shucking and jiving the opportunities of throwing money into Russia :lol

https://wapo.st/3QGplPj (gift link) (snippet below)

https://img-comment-fun.9cache.com/m...0e_700wv_0.mp4
https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/azxdyZp_460sv.mp4

^i wish. I really wish that was the case for the last one.

This fucking guy is destroying one of the greatest countries in human existence. One that spawned the most innovation in arts, science and overall improvement to humanity since the invention of the wheel.

It’s a crying fucking shame

Free for all for Russian Hackers now, no more preventative measures or countermeasures.

These are the little things people don't notice in politics and policy that make me go crazy. An interesting piece from last week.

https://www.kpbs.org/news/border-imm...ntion-facility

A German tourist was recently held in an ICE detention facility (even while she had a return flight back to Germany booked). She was held for over a week in solitary confinement.

While egregious, that's not even the interesting part.

These ICE facilities, like I've harped on before about conservative policies, are contracted to privatized entities, in this case Core Civic. Trump's attorney general Pam Bondi was a lobbyist, who lobbied for that very industry, private prisons for the GEO Group (a private prison company) that stands to gain billions in ICE contracts through the Federal government. Let me also add, she failed to disclose her lobbying positions as a conflict of interest to her now current AG role.

The best part, check both of these company's stocks:
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GEO/...pILQvXhURbs9Ax
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GEO/...pILQvXhURbs9Ax

See something interesting that happened in November (right after the election), both of their stocks doubled in price.

This is the corruption that is happening behind the scenes that people aren't tracking, it's these little things that I love digging around and looking at.

There's so many moving parts in this grift that it can make your head spin.