Trump wants to force a currently constructed carrier that plans on using an electromagnetic launch system back on the old steam system. The new system should have higher up-times, launch planes faster, have the ability to launch heavier planes, have the ability to launch lighter planes, and have simpler support systems. Trump’s decision appears to make no sense on the surface, but, the Navy’s test of the new system has not been released to the public, and while the Navy said good things about the test, they could be misleading or lying.
America’s biggest trade problem is China. Trump started a trade war with China, fought it foolishly, and lost. He escalated tariffs on all goods from China to a level the US couldn’t handle, and that combined with the US need for Chinese rare earths, forced Trump to back down. Tariffs were put on countries who are not rivals and who cooperation with has little to no downsides. Tariffs were put on all sorts of goods, making it difficult for American businesses to operate because they couldn’t afford the inputs to their businesses. China’s strategic cheating on trade affects the whole world. The US could have worked with the world and strategically fought a trade war with China. Instead, the president doesn’t appear to have a basic understanding of economics and world relations, so just blindly tariffed most countries and most goods in such a way that hurt the United States and its people.
Anyone who followed Iran a little bit knew that Iran was likely to close the Strait of Hormuz. The Navy knew that US bases anywhere near Iran and the Strait would have minimum use because the US can’t stop enough Iranian drones and missiles. The Navy also knew that this would put difficult logistic pressures on supplying carriers in a conflict that wasn’t real quick. Yet, there seems to have been completely inadequate preparation for this logistics. This is because the president was convinced by the Secretary of Defense, Israel, and his own foolishness that the Strait would not be closed and the conflict would be quick. The problems we are seeing are partly due to a lack of preparation for a long conflict, even though that was a likely outcome and the president should have known this.
We can hope that Trump’s corruption and authoritarian tendencies are gone with him, but the damage done to the government’s ability to implement policies that help those in need, protect people from the powerful, and invest in the future…this destruction will be difficult to rebuild.
The Trump administration has been ordering US military men and women to commit, or be involved in, war crimes and other illegal activity. It’s difficult for a regular military person to say no to an illegal order. They are expected to follow orders, and it’s hard for them to know if an order is illegal.
DHS said they needed airplanes immediately to deport people, so they bought used planes from a Trump administration donor in a no-bid contract. The planes have hardly been used, but that Trump administration donor made some profit.
The US loses 100 billion dollars a year due to corporate tax avoidance where corporations pretend like their profits came from low tax areas like the small island country of Malta. This is about equal to the budget of the food stamps program. It’s about equal to how much Medicaid spends on children’s healthcare. The Biden administration was trying to alleviate this, but Trump ended attempts to do so.
Rand Paul’s claim that Fauci helped fund gain-of-function research is based on the two men using different definitions of gain of function research. While Paul’s definition makes more sense based on a casual hearing of the phrase “gain-of-function”, other epidemiologists agree with Fauci’s definition, which is based on how it was defined by the Department of Health and Human Services it. The HHS definition required a policy to enhance potentially pandemic pathogens, while experiments Fauci was involved in were on viruses that had not been shown to have this potential due to not being shown to infect humans. Both the NIH and independent screeners agreed it was not gain-of-function based on the HHS guidelines.
Despite some back and forth early on, the evidence now best points toward natural origins for Covid-19, not a lab leak.
There’s no evidence that the virus’s Fauci was involved in evolved into Covid-19.
Paul claims Fauci is a liar, rather than recognizing the regulatory definition that the employee of the government was using. Fauci was using the definition of his employer, which was determined by a formal three-year deliberative process.
This definition was put into effect during the first Trump administration.
Tulsi Gabbard released a lot of files and said they held damning evidence about Fauci. But this wasn’t true. Many people just took her word for it rather than seriously going through the files.
The six-feet guidelines were based on studies on how aerosol viruses spread. The claim they had no basis in science is false.
Fauci stated masks are for healthcare workers but not needed by everyday people before Covid became a global pandemic. As the virus spread, there was more people-to-people transmission, and masks became more available…he advised people to wear masks.
People cherry pick mask studies. The most comprehensive narrative review and meta-analysis of the studies found that masks work.
Rand Paul made false claims about Covid during the pandemic, Fauci pointed out why he was wrong, making anyone in the know see that Rand looked like an idiot. Rand then went on a warpath and is still trying to destroy Fauci.
Comparing Sweden to other Scandinavian countries, which are more similar to Sweden in many ways relative to the United States, Sweden had the highest Covid death rate, and Sweden itself has concluded that its strategy was bad. In Sweden’s second Covid wave, they implemented stricter policies! They corrected course, yet people still claim Sweden’s first wave policies were a success and something to be emulated.
The evidence also supports lockdowns preventing Covid-19 deaths.
Rand Paul is obsessed with prosecuting Fauci, and then Paul and his fellow Republican senators wonder why he pleaded the fifth when they dragged him before them after he no longer worked for the government. While working for the government, Fauci has directly answered many many many questions before Congress.