Musk's DOGE lacks a basic understanding of efficiency with regard to government spending. Efficiency is output over costs, not just cutting. If you reduce spending but also destroy the value or purpose of an operation, you are making things less efficient, you are dismantling.
Here is a recap of the Ukraine situation, for those choosing to reject propaganda and continue seeking truth:
December 1994, Ukraine agrees to give up its nuclear arsenal in return for security guarantees from the US, UK, France, China and Russia.
February 2014, Russia invades and subsequently annexes Crimea, President Obama does next to nothing. War through weakness.
July 2019, Trump admin withholds $250 million in military aid to Ukraine to apply pressure to investigate alleged corruption by Hunter and Joe Biden.
February 2022, Russia invades a weakened Ukraine, world expects Zelenskyy to flee and Kyiv to fall within days. Ukrainians fight bravely for 3+ years, inflict hundreds of thousands of casualties on Russian army, weaken Putin politically.
U.S. has sent ~$70 billion in outdated military equipment to Ukraine since start of war, providing opportunity for U.S. military to modernize its weaponry. We’ve sent an additional $30+ billion in budget support, $75 billion in ancillary appropriations related to war.
~50,000 Ukrainians have died defending their homeland, protecting U.S. and Western interests in the process. Meanwhile, the U.S. President and V.P. are calling democratically-elected Zelenskyy a dictator and berating him in Oval Office in pursuit of a financial payoff.
The U.S. should be thanking Ukrainians, who have fought for our common interests with only modest financial support from a country with a ~$30 trillion GDP.
America can and will reclaim its backbone again soon, with better policy and messaging from common sense moderates.
Slava Ukraina.
Ian Fleming's original James Bond novels haven't aged well. For example, Moonraker - published almost exactly 70 years ago in April 1955 - features a villain who's a super-rich industrialist and rocket-maker seeking to cause chaos because he's a secret Nazi. Such a silly idea!
Once again I am leaving the Munich Security Conference in a low mood. Amongst all the noise, the US signalled their plans for Europe, so things are becoming clearer. But things are clearly not good.
This is what we now know, and what we now have to do about it:🧵1/17
Österreich verdient Stabilität. Wenn die ÖVP nicht bereit ist, die Verhandlungen mit der SPÖ wieder aufzunehmen, sind wir bereit, einen Schritt weiter zu gehen.
Donald Trump is making a deliberate attempt to overwhelm the system, and to overwhelm you. It can be difficult to keep up. And that’s by design.
But we can keep up – and respond. Here’s what he’s doing, and what it means for you. Just the facts. 🧵⤵️
The guy is 53 years old.
He's almost a trillionaire.
He employs many thousands of people.
He's running multiple billion-dollar businesses.
He's made the "heart with hands" gesture. 🫶
He's had access to the same historical information we all have since grade school.
And, just two days before Holocaust Remembrance Day, he tells Germany's AfD it's time to move "past guilt" of the Holocaust.
And you want US to believe that he doesn't know what the fucking sieg heil salute is?
Get the fuck out of here with that gaslighting bullshit.
JUST IN: Elon Musk sits down for an interview with Tucker Carlson, says he is all in with Trump.
“If [Trump] loses, I’m f*cked… How long do you think my prison sentence is going to be?”
🔥🔥🔥
Dort wo Menschen real Kontakt mit Migrant_innen, Asylsuchenden und den bösen Ausländern haben wählen sie nicht rechtsextrem. Dort wo es keinen Kontakt gibt wählen sie aus Angst vor dem Phantasma, das ihnen vorgelogen wird, rechtsextrem.
Die SPD ist bankrott. Selbstverständlich lässt sich die Schere nicht mit „sehr kleinen Steuersätzen“ schließen, weil die Reichen 5-10% Rendite mit ihrem Vermögen erwirtschaften.
Ein Prozent Vermögensteuer macht die Pfeffersäcke nicht ärmer, sondern nur weniger schnell reicher.
Interest rate hikes by the ECB lead to substantially higher profits of European banks. The stock of bank reserves is very high after QE; central banks pay out large amounts of interest rate remunerations to banks, which have increased with every interest rate hike.