Trump promised to balance the budget and lower the debt in his first term, but instead he raised the deficit significantly with Republicans in full control of congress. 40% of our national debt was added during his short 4 year tenure and the deficit EXPLODED…or to MAGA “promise kept”.

If paying down debt is important, you have to support ending the Bush and Trump tax cuts for the top 1%, that would more than balance the budget and start paying down debt all by itself with no cuts at all. Recovering 100% of the PPP loans would help. If lowering debt is important, it follows that you wouldn’t vote for someone who thinks incredibly high debt is good and repeated bankruptcy better, that is Trump’s business history….fraud, massive debts, repeated bankruptcy, and total failures.

Russia is making campaign adds and slogans for Trump. This time you just don't care since he got away with it last time.

Remember, the recent republican created report says clearly Trump's campaign colluded, coordinated, and worked in tandem with Russia, who committed hundreds of crimes in America to help Trump get elected because he's their man, a total pussy and pushover who can't stand up to Putin even when he puts bounties on our military, knowingly and with intent invited foreign powers to interfere in our elections, even publicly on camera, then outright lied in the impeachment hearings.

No they aren't, because it's not slipping. You admitted as much under two weeks ago, said he was articulate and "with it", then forgot what bobski #4 said and went back to " he's lost it, is unstable, can't speak without major gaffes...." while ignoring Trump's disjointed, rambling, inarticulate, unstable speeches illegally using public property for campaign functions.

They are PRETENDING it is, so for suckers who believe constant liars, they are making it slip in your mind, the only place it's true.

Slowing down videos to make people look out of it is a well known Republican ploy, so is editing videos to make speakers appear confused or rambling. Trump looks deranged and unstable live, constantly, no cuts and editing needed. You can find more flubs, lies, misunderstandings, and rambling in any Trump speech than any Russian compilation of all 40 years of Biden's public service, and he stutters, Trump doesn't.

I won't underestimate the stupidity of the American voter again, but without functional absentee voting (the same as mail in) and with Trumpanzees following his instructions to vote twice and just hope you don't go to prison for him, he's already invalidated the election. He might win, but only by multiple forms of cheating and massive suppression. It's possible, he's degraded the country enough to make it possible.

Btw, how did you like Trump's crisis actor at his event in Kenosha. When the owner of a burned camera shop refused to be photographed with Trump or used as part of his divisive political ploy, Trump just got another person to pretend to be him and went ahead with his photo op. You knew he would the instant the words "crisis actor" left his lips, he always does the thing he rails against.
The man holding the Rhodes camera book is not the owner of the shop. He sold it nearly a decade ago and has no connection, knowing this, Trump repeats "your store" and "we're going to help you" to the guy he hired to be a crisis actor. I bet you suddenly love crisis actors and see nothing at all wrong there, despite ranting against them in the past as disgustingly dishonest tricks only liberals play.

Please, another red tsunami. I'm begging you, give us another red tsunami. Landslides are miniscule by comparison, go big.

For the alt-fact conspiracy believing nincompoops, I'm afraid this video is not good enough to convince them. They'll dispute the heck out of the video as a "fake setup."

I can think of:

1) Need to zoom out more so the sensor is clearly shown to be attached to the monitor at all time

2) no cutting out frames (speed up segments are OK?),

3) show the effect on the indicator's ### by not having the sensor attached to the finger (e.g. drops down to 00 or Error), and,

4) show the number by holding the breath (nostrils pinched & mouth closed) for an extended time to see it drops significantly as verification.

Wow. Exceptionally incoherent. Did that video really have no cuts?

https://www.facebook.com/181423698582027/videos/1063955080328880/

Non-stop, no cuts, no music.

It really might be real.

I often think 'If you're going to do 'magic' on TV, there needs to be at least one camera on the magician's hands at all times with no cuts'.
If they can reach off camera and then suddenly 'magic', I'll assume they had it set up just out of sight, and everyone on camera is just in on it pretending to not see the wires/mirror/second deck of cards set up in the chair/etc. That's how nearly every 'magic' TV show works, and it's tiring. Slight of hand magic is nothing if you don't see the hands the whole time....IMO.

Oh, and here's that interview with the stunt coordinator:

http://observer.com/2015/04/daredevil-stunt-coordinator-on-designing-a-one-shot-fight-scene-for-a-blind-hero/

So it was genuinely one shot? No cuts?

No cuts. We did do a few Texas Switches between our actor and our stunt double, but it was purely a one shot fight. There were no cuts in that fight. Every performer, the actors and the stunt doubles, were in there performing that fight full on. I’d say there was a minimum of 105 beats, and they killed it.

Well, Syriza is an acronym for Coalition of the Radical Left (roughly), and everything left of the Berlin Consensus is considered to be radical left. So they are going to call Syriza a radical leftist party until the political landscape itelf has been pulled back towards more leftist positions. But you're right, if they were judged by their positions, they'd be centre-left in theory, if centre-left hadn't turned into corporatism by taking up the Third Way of Schröder/Blair/Clinton.

They are, without a doubt, radically democratic though. As your Grauniad article points out, they haven't turned on their election promises yet, which is quite unheard of for a major European party. Francois Hollande in particular was a major letdown in this regard. Few people expected him to bow down to German demands so quickly. Aside from his 75% special tax for the rich, he dropped just about every single part of his program that could be considered socialism.

Grexit... that's a tough one.

Syriza cannot enforce any troika demands that relate to the programmes of the Chicago School of Economics. Friedman ain't welcome anymore. No cuts to wages or pensions, to privatisation of infrastructure, no cuts to the healthcare system, nor any other form of financial oppression of the lower class. That is non-negotiable. In fact, even increases in welfare programs and the healthcare system are pretty much non-negotiable. Even if Syriza wanted to put any of this on the table, and they sure as hell don't, they couldn't make it part of any deal without further damages to an already devasted democratic system in Greece.

So with that in mind, what's the point of all the negotiations?

Varoufakis' suggestions are very reasonable. The growth-linked bonds, for instance, are used very successfully all over the world in debt negotiations, as just about any bankrupty expert would testify. Like Krugman wrote today, Syriza is merely asking to "recognize the reality everyone supposedly already understands". His caveat about the German electorate is on point as well, we haven't had it explained to us yet – and we chose to ignore what little was explained to us.

Yet the troika insists on something Syriza cannot and will not provide, as just outlined above. Some of the officials still expect Syriza to acknowledge reality, to come to their senses and to accept a deal provided to them. Good luck with that, but don't hold your breath. Similarly, Varoufakis is aware that Berlin is almost guaranteed to play hardball all the way.

Of course, nothing is certain and they might strike a deal during their meeting in Wednesday that offers Greece a way out of misery. Or maybe the ECB decides that to stabilize to Euro, as is their sole purpose, they need to keep Greece within the EZ and away from default. That would allow them to back Greece, to provide them with financial support, at least until they present their program in June/July. Everything is possible. However, I see very little evidence in support of it.

Therefore Grexit might actually be just a question of who to blame it on. Syriza is not going to exit the EZ willy nilly, they need clear pressure from outside, so the record will unequivocally show that it wasn't them who made the call. No country can be thrown out, they have to leave of their own. Additionally, Merkel will not be the person to initiate the unravelling of the EU, as might be the consequence of a Grexit. That's leverage for Greece, the only leverage they have. But it has to be played right or else the blame will be put squarely on Greece, even more so than it already is.

-------
Edit #1: What cannot be overstated is the ability of the EZ to muddle through one crises after another, always on the brink of collapse, yet never actually collapsing. They are determined to hold this thing together, whatever the cost.
-------

Speaking of blame, Yves Smith linked a fantastic article the other day: Syriza and the French Indemnity of 1871-73.

The author makes a convincing case why the suppression of wages in Germany led to disaster in Spain, why it was not a choice on the part of Spain to engage in irresponsible borrowing and how it is a conflict between workers and the financial elite rather than nations. He also offers historical precedent, with Germany being the recipient of a massive cash influx, ending in a catastrophe similar to Spain's nowadays.

It strikes me as a very objective dissection of what happend, what's going on, and what needs to happen to get things back in shape. Then again, it agrees with many points I made on that BBC videos last week, so it's right within my bubble.

No cutting fluid? That's impressive.

I'm surprised there is no cutting fluid being sprayed on it. Most all the multi-axis CNC machines I've seen (not many, admittedly--not my department), required a pretty constant flow of oil. Is this some advancement in cutting tool technology, or is it just that aluminum is soft enough not to need it?

I understand NASA has used 3D printing to create fuel injectors (or something like that) for rocket engines with considerable success. Since it's a solid metal shape with lots of vacant internal channels, there would otherwise have to be a lot of design and construction concessions if it's going to be cut or forged. I suspect that sort of 3D printing will be quite revolutionary for manufacturing once it doesn't cost stupid amounts of money.

This is wonderful stuff. I love the presentation too. Long steady shots of the subject, with a steady stream of information and no fluff. No rapid fire editing. No stupid music. No cutting away to a talking head who will preview/sum-up the video every 60 seconds.

Hey, @FilthyRichmond there IS a line! No cuts!

Between this and Neocons demanding to hear what they like, rather than what's true, I despair for American politics and by extension, Western politics and beyond.

How do you debate with people who just plain don't care about reality? How can a country elect any kind of worthwhile politicians when a section of the voters, too large to be ignored, seem to have no idea about how things are now and have no idea about what either party stands for?

They want another Reagan, yet what they want is nothing like what Reagan did. They want tax cuts, but no cuts on defence, medical aid or the other big federal expenses. They demand the government stay out of health care, yet demand that Medicare and Medicaid aren't cut. They want the government to bring in less money, spent about as much (cutting insignificantly small bits here and there) - yet somehow stop operating on a deficit.

There are so many contradictory demands and demands made on fantasy. And they won't compromise, no, because compromise is for people who are wrong.

I'm starting to think that the answer is Glenn Beck and his ilk. The solution may be for people like Glenn Beck who, intentionally or otherwise, radicalise and mislead these nutters so much that they become more isolated and increasingly irrelevant. Then this lunatic fringe might see their numbers dwindle from just being so ridiculous. When they won't listen to anyone who speaks about reality, what else is there?

You know a situation is FUBAR when Glenn Beck is the answer!

this is obviously fake. If anything just look at that moment starting at 40 seconds in, when the person filming, starts laughing and shaking the camera. There are no cuts, yet one second the guy in the hay is at least 30 meters from the camera, and the next, is just right next to it.

FAKE.

The Iraq war had 70% support when it began.

Public opinion on policy is almost completely divorced from the merits of that policy. The stimulus looks like kind of a dud, but was widely perceived as necessary (outside strong conservative circles) when it passed. The TARP is universally reviled, but it probably saved us from a depression. Policies are unpopular when the opponents do a better job yelling about it than the proponents. Only 4-5 years down the line will the public be able to make an informed decision about whether it was a good or bad policy, because there will be more or fewer people getting better or worse healthcare for more or less money.

Bush did a pretty good job selling his policies, even getting reelected. Obama has not been a good salesman relative to the conservative media, but that doesn't mean his policies are bad ideas. They might be great, or they might be disastrous. We'll know in a few years.

Telling him to give people what they WANT is useless. People want less taxes, lower deficits and no cuts to big entitlements. They want less regulation but fewer corporate abuses. They probably couldn't care less about whether the conference is on CSPAN since they wouldn't watch it anyway.