Even if not true using $4 million Patriots to shoot down these drones is seriously expensive warfare
Would be cheaper not to have this problem but the orangeOne was deciding to fight against them
Bob, you made a very human and balanced post, and it illustrates something many people outside the United States are trying to understand.
From Europe, it increasingly feels like there are two different Americas. On the one hand there is the political leadership that is willing to ignore international law, damage alliances, and even undermine its own scientific and research institutions. Policies like the recent research cuts are not just domestic issues — they affect global cooperation, knowledge, and progress.
On the other hand, there are millions of ordinary Americans — scientists, teachers, engineers, students — who dedicate their lives to improving the world. Your story about your friend shows the human cost of these decisions. When research programs collapse, it’s not just budgets that disappear; it’s dreams, expertise, and years of dedication.
For those of us outside the U.S., it’s important to remember this distinction. Governments can act aggressively or irresponsibly, but that does not define the people themselves. Many Americans are also victims of these policies and are trying to resist or simply continue doing meaningful work despite the obstacles.
So while criticism of political decisions is justified, we should be careful not to condemn an entire population. In the long run, it is precisely those scientists, researchers, and ordinary citizens who will rebuild what has been damaged.
Your story about your friend is a powerful reminder of that.
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I mean, close to 2/3rds of Americans are trying to understand it too. This administration is underwater on every policy. Immigration enforcement, tax cuts for the wealthy, demonizing the LGBTQ community, the clampdown on free speech and the media, elimination of environmental laws, the willy nilly firing of government employees, tariffs, the Epstein files, the grift and corruption of the Administration, and of course yet another Middle East war, are all deeply unpopular. I’m sure I’m missing something big in this list but from top to bottom things are just awful.
The optimistic side of me says that the November elections will be a landslide for the opposition. The pessimistic side of me wonders if we’ll even have elections (there’s already leaked proposals for using the war as a reason to not have elections).
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The zionist billionaires (disproportionally hedge fund or private equity in nature have asset stripped your economy, exported good jobs, replacing them with minimum wage ones such that America produces little any more except overpriced armaments for an obedient armed forces to buy).They own both Democrat and Republican parties so it matters not a whit who you vote for and have most recently got you into a disaster of a war to serve Israel. Your only hope is a revolution to sweep those parasites away
And yet overall Trump is still running at 40% approval
Those just dont jive
If these were so not-to-scale as portrayed (they are painting maybe to 1:2 or 1:3 scale images) then it seems like just the kind of mis-identification that AI would perform but that a skilled human observer hopefully wouldn’t. OTOH the image on the right looks AI generated to me.
It’s getting so you can’t be sure of what your eyes behold anymore, which is probably the point.
Well in rough numbers 40% isn’t that far off from 33% so it’s only a small stretch at best to say 2/3 don’t approve.
I also don’t think that voter participation is that great elsewhere (though it’s probably often better) so the gap between 1/3 approval and the 1/2+ needed to win an election isn’t really hard to understand either. The gap is non-voters or voters who are going to vote for independent & 3rd party candidates.
yes
low voter turnouts ARE a problem in many democracies
The big problem is shown like this in one project FDA was driving and sponsoring, Deloitte had many developers in this project. With start of Doge this scientifical project is not really dead but it is at it’s end. Nobody is in development anymore. They had a lst one but this guy was changing from Deloitte to another company. There was no way anymore to drive that project forward.
If this would be a simple project without real meaning I would like to say okay, nobody needs that. In this case it is a project to bring standardization in medical wordnungs. To do this one guy from FDA was forming this project and it is marvellous to use for this case. I was even working long time with my team on it. But when the government decides there is no money anymore: it ends up. And so projects like this are dead. And many other aspects of scientific in America are also disabled now. There are scientists stopping their work in case of green energy, there is an entire Industry which is obviously superfluous: the green energy industry. And in a time in Germany there is no nuclear energy use and also non in planning (like Mr. Trump stated more than once) e have more than 50% of our electrical Energy from Wind, Sun and the nature. Even Agriculture with biogas plants is bringing much green energy. But in America there is a “drill baby drill” strategy of a President which believes that there is no global warming.
Everything is like 1960. The American politics are extremely dangerous. For the entire world. He destroys economical capacity in America, Europe and Asia. Not for America First. Only while he can. And he even tries to reach more Oil capacities. A dream: Venecuela and now Iran would be under American control. I can only say: should be the other way around. But that’s not what this President wants.
The people in America are separated in two parts: Republicans which are following their President bling into hell and the democratic party followers which are shocked when they look on their former nice country. Well, we can speak long about this. We can be sad together that he destroyed the America we loved. Yes, even me. But there is no chance to get around.
At the moment he provocates a war with Iran. That would help cause: no election when in war. And so he believes may be: I can be President for long time on top while no election.
People of America, stand up. Get up. Do something against this moron.
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The things that have silently been dismantled, discontinued, or disbanded will hurt America for decades to come
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Definitely. Projects like this driving scientifics forward. And now they ended it up. For me at the end no real loss. I can work on other projects and everything is okay. But.
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This is akin to someone looking at their feet
While sitting down
And wondering why the hell they need all those silly little appendages on them for
Then removing them
And eventually trying to stand up and realizing that Oh shit those might have been useful
its not necessarily the immediate harm thats going to hurt the most
but down the road its debilitating
The problem is that 1/3 is plenty enough to overthrow a government, especially if well funded. Think of how many or few were involved in other revolutions? The Fall of the Roman Republic? A few dozen in the right positions - and positioning is what is going on aplenty. With loyalty ‘trumping’ competence at every turn.
Which is exactly why demonizing all Palestinians as either belonging to or approving of Hamas is even more wrong. Hamas was elected a generation ago in a way reminiscent of how Trump was elected – narrow margins – and may be prescient of where the US is going, as there have been no non-sham elections since. Palestinians are people (teachers, doctors, artists, shopkeepers, etc., occasionally even Christians) and not disposable demons who have given up their humanity because a minority of them 2+ decades ago elected Hamas. It will be that way for Americans too. We can and should confront our shadow, too – things are the way they are because they got that way – but individuals must never be dehumanized or abandoned.
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The problem IS the HAMAS. Like in Libanon the Hisbollah. We can’t do anything against them without terrifying the civilians. Thet is definitel a BIG problem. I for exampke love the Libanon, Beirut is a wonderful city. With many christians. With many muslim people which are everything else than troublemakers. With a government which is not able to avoid this Hisbollah shit. The other side is israel. Attaked with rockets every day. Years of needing to run into a shelter. Years without any kind of peace. Delivered by Iran. Controlled by Iran. And financed by Iran. This problem can not be solved with bombs. This probem can not be solved with war. Or sentences like this I was listening tha last 25 years to. But there is a problem. Israel has to do something. To protect the citizens. Muslims, Jews, Christians. All of them. Rockets making no difference. The people in big cities like Tel-Aviv or Jerusalem will be better protected. The smaller cities not. And there are people dying. That makes the position of israel clear.Fot them it is a war for existency. Attacking now Iran is the project to cut the source of theese weapons to Hisbollah and Hamas. And also to Huti rebels.
At the price of destabilizing the entire region and quite in fact the whole world, and diminishing the standing of Jewish people in the eyes of the world.
This is really Bibi’s dream of 40 years according to his own statements. Epstein likely sold video of Trump to Mossad so Trump is as beholden to Bibi as he is to Vlad.
If people would negotiate like their existence depended on it the same way they start wars like their existence depended on it, it’d be a different world. But alas.
I have not even met anyone who does that. EVERYONE (except horse as a Hamas supporter) I communicated with said HAMAS is the problem, NOT the Palestinians. However MOST also say it is the Palestinians that LET Hamas do their thing (and a sizeable proportion actually supports them).
Your comparison with Trump’s USA is very valid.
You man the World of which a sizeable proportion fell for Hamas’ propaganda? I had discussions with some students that weren’t even aware of Camp David and Hamas’ stated objective to torpedo the Peace Agreement and the Destruction of Israel.
If you can come up with a better way of stopping fanatical terrorists of murdering you then I’m all ears, but that sanctimonious point of view is just another washing of the hands …
And if you think negotiations with fanatical terrorists are a solution then I have a bridge to sell that you might be interested in.
Islamic State broke every promise they made. The Taliban in Afghanistan broke every guarantee they gave.
Islamic terrorists believe that while mainstream Islamic teachings emphasizes honesty that this applies only between Muslims, and that Taqiyya gives them the right to lie to non-believers as long as it promotes their cause.
They also lean heavily on what Mohammed is reported to have said, "Lying is not permissible except in three situations: a man speaking to his wife to please her; lying in war; and lying to reconcile between people " (Tirmidhi, Hadith 1939).
And as they see themselves as being in a continous War that’s what you get.
If the Politicians had to be at the front of any attack like in ancient times and not on the other side of an ocean or the planet then that would be much better.
No, but it appears too much of the world falls for the Israeli government propaganda which is basically that Palestinians are inhuman monsters who should be exterminated.
Genocide and apartheid have very clear definitions and are crimes against humanity regardless of what else is true (e.g., that Hamas is among them, some of them support Hamas). It is never right to incinerate children, to tell people to go to place X and then bomb it, etc.
I am not suggesting that it’s an easy situation with an easy solution but brutalizing and dehumanizing the people of Israel by normalizing having them commit atrocities against the people of Palestine certainly isn’t going to help. The Israeli military has become a goon squad and many of the Israeli people have become complicit in it. That does not serve Israel’s interests much less anyone else’s.
Here in the US we are slowly hoisting ourselves on the same petard. People get used to brutality, cruelty, and constant threat of violence, they turn away, they allow and enable it, particularly if they think they will be spared if they keep their heads down. Granted the percentage of immigrants who are “violent criminals” in the US is miniscule compared to the minority of Palestinians that are Hamas. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less obscene.
The consultant’s dictum always applies: “Things are the way they are because they got that way”. Israeli authorities have justified these crimes for generations now and things have gotten worse, not better. Apparently now they believe that only if you kill all Muslims in the region by brute force can the problem be solved, which only hardens Muslims attitudes further. It isn’t practical to kill them all even if it was somehow “okay” to do so. The situation is therefore not sustainable.
I’d be all for that. It would accomplish the same thing: suddenly negotiation in good faith would be very popular.