Knobby22
Mmmmmm 2nd breakfast
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They named it after Erin Paterson, don't trust her Trump!
Trump 2.0
- Thread starter Knobby22
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They named it after Erin Paterson, don't trust her Trump!
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IFocus
You are arguing with a Galah
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I am greatly relieved that Epsteins convicted accomplice in grooming and abusing children has cleared Trump and Prince Andrew of any wrongdoing.
Its also very heartening that she has been moved to a much nicer location befitting her honesty and integrity openly answering reality tough questions from Trump’s own lawyer now serving the public of the USA
The Cult cheers on….
Its also very heartening that she has been moved to a much nicer location befitting her honesty and integrity openly answering reality tough questions from Trump’s own lawyer now serving the public of the USA
The Cult cheers on….
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Yes finding middle ground is difficult, there are cults to the right of me, loonies to the left and here I am stuck in the middle with you.
Now all I need is someone to steal my wheels.
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You know if this was TV show you would laugh at the scripts. In fact now that I think about it perhaps this is the Truman Show updated to the Trump show ? Or would that be too crazy ? Actually nothing can be "too crazy" in this insane, ridiculous, criminal excuse for a government.
10 things you can learn from “The Truman Show”!
“The Truman Show” is a 1998 satirical comedy-drama film directed by Peter Weir and starring Jim Carrey. The film tells the story of Truman…
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Virginia Guifrees memoirs will be posthumously released on 21st October. Probably;y learn a lot more about Epstein et al from that book than 10,000 pages of testimony by other characters
www.theguardian.com
Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre’s memoir to be published posthumously
Nobody’s Girl, which Giuffre had been working on before her death, is set to be released this autumn
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Rewriting History in the Trumpian/ Stalinist image.
Trump’s attacks on the Smithsonian are meant to convince us that truth doesn’t matter and we should blindly accept his lies
....Apparently, the purpose of removing programs that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans by race or promote ideologies inconsistent with federal law” is to present the American past as an unblemished landscape of positivity and perfection, to pretend that nothing wrong – let alone evil – has been done on our shores since our nation’s founding.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/22/trump-philosophy-authoritarian-government
The point is to create a national identity that mirrors the president’s own view of himself as a model of moral purity, an angelic being who has never made a mistake that merits an apology or even a moment of regret. If white America has never harmed, disenfranchised, enslaved and slaughtered our Black and Indigenous American populations, then clearly there’s no reason to take the measures – such as the establishment of DEI programs – designed to remedy the inequities and cruelties that the powerful have inflicted on the weak.
www.theguardian.com
We shouldn’t focus on ‘how bad slavery was’ says Trump. What’s next?
Francine ProseTrump’s attacks on the Smithsonian are meant to convince us that truth doesn’t matter and we should blindly accept his lies
....Apparently, the purpose of removing programs that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans by race or promote ideologies inconsistent with federal law” is to present the American past as an unblemished landscape of positivity and perfection, to pretend that nothing wrong – let alone evil – has been done on our shores since our nation’s founding.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/22/trump-philosophy-authoritarian-government
The point is to create a national identity that mirrors the president’s own view of himself as a model of moral purity, an angelic being who has never made a mistake that merits an apology or even a moment of regret. If white America has never harmed, disenfranchised, enslaved and slaughtered our Black and Indigenous American populations, then clearly there’s no reason to take the measures – such as the establishment of DEI programs – designed to remedy the inequities and cruelties that the powerful have inflicted on the weak.
We shouldn’t focus on ‘how bad slavery was’ says Trump. What’s next? | Francine Prose
Trump’s attacks on the Smithsonian are meant to convince us that truth doesn’t matter and we should blindly accept his lies
Craton
Mostly passive, contrarian.
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The drivel from this crew, especially the P and VP beggars belief.
Take JD Vance e.g., states that WWII (and every major conflict) was ended by "negotiation" between the warring parties. Nah, mate.
It took Hilter to self terminate and a couple of nukes being dropped before Germany and Japan unconditionally surrendered the fight.
These countries were beaten to the point they could no longer wage war. This is precisely what needs to happen to Putin's Russian.
Thing is, TACO needs Pootin for all the various nefarious affairs this knuckle dragging MAGA crew and cohorts can run and invent. Talk about feather nesting.
Take JD Vance e.g., states that WWII (and every major conflict) was ended by "negotiation" between the warring parties. Nah, mate.
It took Hilter to self terminate and a couple of nukes being dropped before Germany and Japan unconditionally surrendered the fight.
These countries were beaten to the point they could no longer wage war. This is precisely what needs to happen to Putin's Russian.
Thing is, TACO needs Pootin for all the various nefarious affairs this knuckle dragging MAGA crew and cohorts can run and invent. Talk about feather nesting.
IFocus
You are arguing with a Galah
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Trump wants to meet with Kim Jong Un….
The Cult keeps cheering
The Cult keeps cheering
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Lol so I check into this thread hoping to see something worthwhile by the likes of Fin, Wayne, DB..... but no just the usual mouthy TDS leftists looking to agitate and soil the emperor's shrine 
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IFocus
You are arguing with a Galah
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Lol so I check into this thread hoping to see something worthwhile by the likes of Fin, Wayne, DB..... but no just the usual mouthy TDS leftists looking to agitate and soil the emperor's shrine
Passive support noted.
Cult keeps cheering
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Hehehe, he hardly needs my support. It's funny that you guys think once he's done it's back to the regularly scheduled programming. He's broken the mould. MAGA is much more than just DJT. Many young American men, especially, feeling that they've copped a raw deal are VERY MAGA.
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For those who look beyond superficial baitclick headlines, the data shoa a big decline in Democrat support, and an equally large increase in Republican support.
The scale of the Trump win was mindblowing when you look at the data, and was so far ahead of the expert pundits.
Whether people like it or not, there has been a seismic shift in US voter intentions.
The GOP are already preparing for next POTUS and the Dem pool of candidates is looking thin.
Mick
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How dangerous is the Trump administration ? The impact of his Health Administration on vaccine research will be catastrophic in the event of the next significant Bird flu mutation. Or indeed any other highly transmissable disease.
The avian flu virus is now just one mutation away from easier transmission among humans. Donald Trump’s health chief is a grave risk to world health
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...-jr-trump-vaccine-research-avian-flu#comments
616
You’d be hard-pressed to find many public health experts who have positive things to say about Donald Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States. Alongside his numerous policy failures, one Cornell University study found that he was the biggest source of Covid-19 misinformation. But if there’s one redeeming feature to Trump’s pandemic record, it has to be his leadership on Operation Warp Speed – a massive, government-funded initiative that played a pivotal role in fast-tracking Covid-19 vaccines.
“Operation Warp Speed stands as one of the most remarkable scientific and humanitarian achievements of the past half-century,” the former US surgeon general Jerome Adams said. It directed billions of dollars into vaccine development and manufacturing, particularly into the mRNA platform, which became the backbone of the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines.
Vaccines work by preparing the body’s immune system to identify and successfully attack foreign agents entering the body. Traditional vaccines use weakened or inactivated viruses to offer a baby version for the body to fight and learn from. These vaccines are often produced by growing the virus in hen’s eggs, which means production is slow and can take months to scale up. In contrast, the mRNA platform functions like a plug-and-play video game console: you just “plug in” the genetic code of a particular virus or pathogen. The vaccine provides instructions to our bodies to make parts of the virus in our own cells, which then prompts an immune response.
The process of creating and manufacturing these vaccines is much faster and more flexible than their traditional counterparts. This is especially important for a disease such as avian flu, which has an up to 100% mortality rate in chickens. But despite the speed in which they come together, there is still a considerable time-lag before mass rollout to allow for clinical trials to ensure human safety, test for side-effects and figure out optimal dosing. During the Covid pandemic, the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines were created within weeks of research teams receiving the genetic sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 from China in January 2020. What took a year was the testing and regulatory approval processes to ensure there was trust in their safety.
Given Trump’s success with Operation Warp Speed, it’s particularly bizarre that Robert F Kennedy Jr, his health and human services secretary, has announced $500m in cuts to the mRNA vaccine investment portfolio. These include cancelling funding for Moderna’s development into a late-stage H5N1 avian flu vaccine. I asked Prof Rebecca Katz, a global health security expert and former US State Department adviser, for her assessment of the damage. She called it: “A self-inflicted wound to a vital organ.”
On its own, RFK Jr’s decision isn’t surprising, considering his longstanding anti-vax advocacy and cult-like following. He has built a whole identity on anti-science rhetoric and he is especially vocal about the supposed dangers of mRNA technology. But being an anti-vaxxer is also a tricky road to navigate: RFK Jr upset his base when, under considerable political pressure, he finally endorsed MMR vaccinations during the Texas measles outbreak.
But putting one personality aside, what do these cuts mean for the health of people living in the US and the wider world? It’s bad news. Take the example of H5N1 avian flu. This virus has shown concerning step-changes including becoming endemic in wild birds, infecting a number of poultry farms, and now has sufficient mutations to enable cow-to-cow (mammal to mammal) transmission in the US among dairy cattle. With its circulation in certain herds of dairy cattle has come a rise in human infections (cow-to-human). The virus is now one mutation away from easier transmission among humans. That’s the nightmare scenario: an influenza pandemic, possibly more lethal than Covid-19.
If a human-to-human transmissible H5N1 strain appears, the existing mRNA infrastructure could be used to rapidly develop a targeted vaccine. Many countries, including the UK, have been stockpiling vaccine components or ramping up surveillance. Under the Biden administration, the US had been among the leaders in this effort. By shelving investment and halting further development, the US is essentially gambling that we won’t need quick medical countermeasures. It’s a dangerous bet. When the next pandemic happens, the cost in human lives could be much higher than we witnessed in 2020.
Can other countries simply pick up the slack with mRNA production? Not easily. After the Covid pandemic led to huge disparities in which places in the world had access to vaccine supply, many countries starting planning for their own vaccine and mRNA hubs. They didn’t want to be dependent on the charity of the US or UK to donate them doses: they wanted to independently respond effectively. On a National Academies project that I was vice-chair of on the global coordination of vaccines for pandemic influenza, we looked closely into regional production, including in Africa. What I learned from experts across the world is that vaccine production, especially mRNA-based vaccines, requires a high degree of technical expertise, quality control and highly specialised supply chains. It will happen in other places, but not quickly enough to shoulder the impact of the US decision.
Unlike foreign aid cuts, where the effect is felt immediately in the shutting down of food programmes or health clinics, cuts to research funding have a slower, deeper impact, especially in terms of expertise and knowledge generation. Research programmes that were working on pandemic preparedness are closing. Postdoctoral researchers aren’t finding jobs, without the necessary soft money to support them. PhD programmes have been frozen or cancelled. Universities, highly dependent on government funding, are scaling back their research activities in health, especially in areas that money is being cut from. Perhaps most devastating of all: smart, ambitious young scientists have fewer opportunities to develop careers in public health research and vaccine development. They’ll look elsewhere – into AI, tech, finance. Where will the expertise come from in the next 15 to 20 years if the career pipeline is being shut down?
RFK Jr may position himself as Making America Healthy Again, but in reality, his policies make the entire world more vulnerable. He may, in fact, be the most dangerous person in the Trump administration – not because he’s loud or erratic, but because he’s steadily eroding the foundation of public health research and infrastructure. This isn’t just bad policy. It’s a generational setback. In that light, RFK Jr stands not merely as a controversial figure but as a serious risk to national and global health security.
www.theguardian.com
RFK Jr has slashed vaccine research. You need to know how perilous that is for the world
Devi SridharThe avian flu virus is now just one mutation away from easier transmission among humans. Donald Trump’s health chief is a grave risk to world health
- Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...-jr-trump-vaccine-research-avian-flu#comments
616
You’d be hard-pressed to find many public health experts who have positive things to say about Donald Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States. Alongside his numerous policy failures, one Cornell University study found that he was the biggest source of Covid-19 misinformation. But if there’s one redeeming feature to Trump’s pandemic record, it has to be his leadership on Operation Warp Speed – a massive, government-funded initiative that played a pivotal role in fast-tracking Covid-19 vaccines.
“Operation Warp Speed stands as one of the most remarkable scientific and humanitarian achievements of the past half-century,” the former US surgeon general Jerome Adams said. It directed billions of dollars into vaccine development and manufacturing, particularly into the mRNA platform, which became the backbone of the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines.
Vaccines work by preparing the body’s immune system to identify and successfully attack foreign agents entering the body. Traditional vaccines use weakened or inactivated viruses to offer a baby version for the body to fight and learn from. These vaccines are often produced by growing the virus in hen’s eggs, which means production is slow and can take months to scale up. In contrast, the mRNA platform functions like a plug-and-play video game console: you just “plug in” the genetic code of a particular virus or pathogen. The vaccine provides instructions to our bodies to make parts of the virus in our own cells, which then prompts an immune response.
The process of creating and manufacturing these vaccines is much faster and more flexible than their traditional counterparts. This is especially important for a disease such as avian flu, which has an up to 100% mortality rate in chickens. But despite the speed in which they come together, there is still a considerable time-lag before mass rollout to allow for clinical trials to ensure human safety, test for side-effects and figure out optimal dosing. During the Covid pandemic, the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines were created within weeks of research teams receiving the genetic sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 from China in January 2020. What took a year was the testing and regulatory approval processes to ensure there was trust in their safety.
Given Trump’s success with Operation Warp Speed, it’s particularly bizarre that Robert F Kennedy Jr, his health and human services secretary, has announced $500m in cuts to the mRNA vaccine investment portfolio. These include cancelling funding for Moderna’s development into a late-stage H5N1 avian flu vaccine. I asked Prof Rebecca Katz, a global health security expert and former US State Department adviser, for her assessment of the damage. She called it: “A self-inflicted wound to a vital organ.”
On its own, RFK Jr’s decision isn’t surprising, considering his longstanding anti-vax advocacy and cult-like following. He has built a whole identity on anti-science rhetoric and he is especially vocal about the supposed dangers of mRNA technology. But being an anti-vaxxer is also a tricky road to navigate: RFK Jr upset his base when, under considerable political pressure, he finally endorsed MMR vaccinations during the Texas measles outbreak.
But putting one personality aside, what do these cuts mean for the health of people living in the US and the wider world? It’s bad news. Take the example of H5N1 avian flu. This virus has shown concerning step-changes including becoming endemic in wild birds, infecting a number of poultry farms, and now has sufficient mutations to enable cow-to-cow (mammal to mammal) transmission in the US among dairy cattle. With its circulation in certain herds of dairy cattle has come a rise in human infections (cow-to-human). The virus is now one mutation away from easier transmission among humans. That’s the nightmare scenario: an influenza pandemic, possibly more lethal than Covid-19.
If a human-to-human transmissible H5N1 strain appears, the existing mRNA infrastructure could be used to rapidly develop a targeted vaccine. Many countries, including the UK, have been stockpiling vaccine components or ramping up surveillance. Under the Biden administration, the US had been among the leaders in this effort. By shelving investment and halting further development, the US is essentially gambling that we won’t need quick medical countermeasures. It’s a dangerous bet. When the next pandemic happens, the cost in human lives could be much higher than we witnessed in 2020.
Can other countries simply pick up the slack with mRNA production? Not easily. After the Covid pandemic led to huge disparities in which places in the world had access to vaccine supply, many countries starting planning for their own vaccine and mRNA hubs. They didn’t want to be dependent on the charity of the US or UK to donate them doses: they wanted to independently respond effectively. On a National Academies project that I was vice-chair of on the global coordination of vaccines for pandemic influenza, we looked closely into regional production, including in Africa. What I learned from experts across the world is that vaccine production, especially mRNA-based vaccines, requires a high degree of technical expertise, quality control and highly specialised supply chains. It will happen in other places, but not quickly enough to shoulder the impact of the US decision.
Unlike foreign aid cuts, where the effect is felt immediately in the shutting down of food programmes or health clinics, cuts to research funding have a slower, deeper impact, especially in terms of expertise and knowledge generation. Research programmes that were working on pandemic preparedness are closing. Postdoctoral researchers aren’t finding jobs, without the necessary soft money to support them. PhD programmes have been frozen or cancelled. Universities, highly dependent on government funding, are scaling back their research activities in health, especially in areas that money is being cut from. Perhaps most devastating of all: smart, ambitious young scientists have fewer opportunities to develop careers in public health research and vaccine development. They’ll look elsewhere – into AI, tech, finance. Where will the expertise come from in the next 15 to 20 years if the career pipeline is being shut down?
RFK Jr may position himself as Making America Healthy Again, but in reality, his policies make the entire world more vulnerable. He may, in fact, be the most dangerous person in the Trump administration – not because he’s loud or erratic, but because he’s steadily eroding the foundation of public health research and infrastructure. This isn’t just bad policy. It’s a generational setback. In that light, RFK Jr stands not merely as a controversial figure but as a serious risk to national and global health security.
- Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh
RFK Jr has slashed vaccine research. You need to know how perilous that is for the world | Devi Sridhar
The avian flu virus is now just one mutation away from easier transmission among humans. Trump’s health chief is a grave risk to world health, says Prof Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh
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They fall in behind an obvious (to me anyway) sociopath
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It'll be interesting to see whether they wheel Kamala out again for another crack, or if they go with maybe pretty boy Gavin. Or someone else. The Dems probably have a better chance with Gav but going with him for them would be a bitter pill to swallow - as many of their base never want a straight White guy to be the Democrat candidate for President... like EVER again, EVER, lol.
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A step by step reality check on what Trump is doing to the US.
Trump’s dictator-like behaviour is so brazen, so blatant, that paradoxically, we discount it. But now it’s time to call it what it is
If this were happening somewhere else – in Latin America, say – how might it be reported? Having secured his grip on the capital, the president is now set to send troops to several rebel-held cities, claiming he is wanted there to restore order. The move follows raids on the homes of leading dissidents and comes as armed men seen as loyal to the president, many of them masked, continue to pluck people off the streets …
Except this is happening in the United States of America and so we don’t quite talk about it that way. That’s not the only reason. It’s also because Donald Trump’s march towards authoritarianism is so steady, taking another step or two every day, that it’s easy to become inured to it: you can’t be in a state of shock permanently. And, besides, sober-minded people are wary of sounding hyperbolic or hysterical: their instinct is to play down rather than scream at the top of their voice.
(and a long string of examples in the middle)
....As Trump himself said this week, “A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we’d like a dictator.’” The former Obama adviser David Axelrod is not alone when he says, “We have gone from zero to Hungary faster than I ever imagined.”
The trouble is, people still don’t talk about it the way they talk about Hungary, not inside the US and not outside it. That’s partly the It Can’t Happen Here mindset, partly a reluctance to accept a reality that would require, of foreign governments especially, a rethink of almost everything. If the US is on its way to autocracy, in a condition scholars might call “unconsolidated authoritarianism”, then that changes Britain’s entire strategic position, its place in the world, which for 80 years has been predicated on the notion of a west led by a stable, democratic US. The same goes for the EU. Far easier to carry on, either pretending that the transformation of the US is not, in fact, as severe as it is, or that normal service will resume shortly. But the world’s leaders, like US citizens, cannot ignore the evidence indefinitely. To adapt the title of that long-ago novel, it can happen here – and it is.
www.theguardian.com
Step back and take it in: the US is entering full authoritarian mode
Jonathan FreedlandTrump’s dictator-like behaviour is so brazen, so blatant, that paradoxically, we discount it. But now it’s time to call it what it is
If this were happening somewhere else – in Latin America, say – how might it be reported? Having secured his grip on the capital, the president is now set to send troops to several rebel-held cities, claiming he is wanted there to restore order. The move follows raids on the homes of leading dissidents and comes as armed men seen as loyal to the president, many of them masked, continue to pluck people off the streets …
Except this is happening in the United States of America and so we don’t quite talk about it that way. That’s not the only reason. It’s also because Donald Trump’s march towards authoritarianism is so steady, taking another step or two every day, that it’s easy to become inured to it: you can’t be in a state of shock permanently. And, besides, sober-minded people are wary of sounding hyperbolic or hysterical: their instinct is to play down rather than scream at the top of their voice.
(and a long string of examples in the middle)
....As Trump himself said this week, “A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we’d like a dictator.’” The former Obama adviser David Axelrod is not alone when he says, “We have gone from zero to Hungary faster than I ever imagined.”
The trouble is, people still don’t talk about it the way they talk about Hungary, not inside the US and not outside it. That’s partly the It Can’t Happen Here mindset, partly a reluctance to accept a reality that would require, of foreign governments especially, a rethink of almost everything. If the US is on its way to autocracy, in a condition scholars might call “unconsolidated authoritarianism”, then that changes Britain’s entire strategic position, its place in the world, which for 80 years has been predicated on the notion of a west led by a stable, democratic US. The same goes for the EU. Far easier to carry on, either pretending that the transformation of the US is not, in fact, as severe as it is, or that normal service will resume shortly. But the world’s leaders, like US citizens, cannot ignore the evidence indefinitely. To adapt the title of that long-ago novel, it can happen here – and it is.
Step back and take it in: the US is entering full authoritarian mode | Jonathan Freedland
Trump’s dictator-like behaviour is so brazen, so blatant, that paradoxically, we discount it. But now it’s time to call it what it is, says Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland
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