Donald Trump

[stevebrooks]

25% tariff on all Apple products that are manufactured outside the US. Now this is fun right, Trump is demanding that Apple manufacture iPhones in the US or be subject to tariffs, so what are the problems associated with manufacturing iPhones in the US, Tim Cook:

Remember when doddery Trump couldn't remember his name, so he just called him "Tim Apple"? I agree it's fun, because of the high likelihood that Trump's antics will have the same effect on American politics as they have in Canada and Australia. Dutton and co were strutting around like roosters a few months ago, I look forward to seeing the Republican party reduced to feather duster status like our battered and bloody conservatives here.

Reading more about Tim Apple, I note that he was appointed as Chief Operating Officer in 1998, and HE was the one responsible for the major wave of shutting US factories and shifting production to Taiwan. By the time the iphone came along, it was Taiwan/India/China all the way.

I've just finished reading "Overshoot" by William Catton, and one of his chapters is about how difficult it is for humans to press rewind. He gives the example of an epic restoration program to recreate a colonial neighbourhood in Wlliamsburg in the 1930s. It cost vastly more to rebuild the old structures in modern times than it was to put them there a century or more earlier.

It looks like the same principle applies to the industrial activities of Apple. In fact the entire basis of "make America great again", and Trump's dreams of reviving American manufacturing are pretty much impossible to achieve. And in the case of the iphone, it was never made in America anyway, it's completely a conception of globalisation, developed years after America fell behind Asia and lost the ability to make such a high-tech mass market device.

Fortunately Trump has clarified, it won't just be Apple, it will be anyone that makes that product, I am guessing he means smartphones and not iPhones because only Apply make iPhones, but he said "Samsung and anyone else who makes that product," so sorry American's, you can't get away with just buying an Android phone, of any sort, he is basically tariffing an entire industry, I am not sure what makes him think he can pressure or demand the likes of Samsung to open phone manufacturing facilities in the US. Tell him he's dreaming, or delusional, someone please!

The end result, whichever way these companies go, is that smart phones in the US will be at least 25% more expensive, rising to 400% or 500% if anyone tries to manufacture in the US. But that won't happen will it, because anyone that tries to manufacture in the US will be stupidly expensive compared to imported phones with 25% tariff and they will sell zero phones, so they will either abandon the idea or simply go bust pretty quickly. Morons, morons everywhere!

[stevebrooks]

The idiot in chief speaks;

Donald Trump has taken a rare swipe at Vladimir Putin, saying he doesn’t know “what the hell happened” to his Russian counterpart in the wake of his most recent large-scale strike against Ukraine.

“I’m not happy with what Putin is doing,” Mr Trump told reporters of the attack, which saw hundreds of drones and missiles target Ukrainian cities overnight.

“He’s killing a lot of people, and I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin.

“I’ve known him a long time, always gotten along with him, but he’s sending rockets into cities and killing people, and I don’t like it at all.”

This is exactly what Putin has been doing since the beginning of the invasion, he's to stupid to run a burger king let alone a country, he's just fallen for all of Putin propaganda, he probably think Ukraine attacked Russia to start with, his remarks in the past seem to indicate that. Putin want's Ukraine and is willing to kill its entire population to take the country, this idiot in the WH thinks Putin is a nice guy and just wants peace, no wonder the US is sop fucked up!

https://www.news.com.au/world/north-ame ... 8255dd33b5

[stevebrooks]

Trump threat, 50% tariffs on the European Union because they are so nasty, worse than China. Market tanks, two days later, pause those tariffs until July 9th. Oh lol, that's all you can do, laugh!

[pipbarber]

25% tariff on all Apple products that are manufactured outside the US. Now this is fun right, Trump is demanding that Apple manufacture iPhones in the US or be subject to tariffs, so what are the problems associated with manufacturing iPhones in the US, Tim Cook:

Remember when doddery Trump couldn't remember his name, so he just called him "Tim Apple"? I agree it's fun, because of the high likelihood that Trump's antics will have the same effect on American politics as they have in Canada and Australia. Dutton and co were strutting around like roosters a few months ago, I look forward to seeing the Republican party reduced to feather duster status like our battered and bloody conservatives here.

Reading more about Tim Apple, I note that he was appointed as Chief Operating Officer in 1998, and HE was the one responsible for the major wave of shutting US factories and shifting production to Taiwan. By the time the iphone came along, it was Taiwan/India/China all the way.

I've just finished reading "Overshoot" by William Catton, and one of his chapters is about how difficult it is for humans to press rewind. He gives the example of an epic restoration program to recreate a colonial neighbourhood in Wlliamsburg in the 1930s. It cost vastly more to rebuild the old structures in modern times than it was to put them there a century or more earlier.

It looks like the same principle applies to the industrial activities of Apple. In fact the entire basis of "make America great again", and Trump's dreams of reviving American manufacturing are pretty much impossible to achieve. And in the case of the iphone, it was never made in America anyway, it's completely a conception of globalisation, developed years after America fell behind Asia and lost the ability to make such a high-tech mass market device.

I feel it's similar to climate change. If you actually want to do anything substantive about it you have to change the economic, political and cultural system that produced it. You could bring manufacturing back to a developed nation, but not without redesigning broader economic and political structures and changing the culture. That can be done, but it would take time and it would take a great deal of intelligence, competency, planning and education, and no one in the maga movement has the capacity to produce anything that might fall into a category headed by those four words.

Maga often talk about 1880-1914 as the golden age, the 'again' period. In some sense, they are successfully fulfilling their brief. It was a time when America was largely irrelevant, beyond it's various border wars. It was a cultural backwater, a political isolationist, wildly racist and comparatively poor. That's where maga is taking the US, so have at it.

[stevebrooks]

Hey do we all remember Watergate? Illegal wire tapping etc, well guess who is suddenly involved an illegal wire tapping scandal, no not Trump, although I certainly wouldn't put it past him, but that purveyor of leaks and scandals, Peter Hegseth! He has apparently been using illegal NSA wire taps to spy on his own staff!

[stevebrooks]

The health department of the US, under RFK, has decided not to develop a vaccine against bird flu, the H5N1 strain currently spreading among US chickens and livestock. Not just not develop it, but cancel a contract already existing with Moderna;

The Department of Health and Human Services said it is terminating a $766 million contract with the vaccine company Moderna to develop an mRNA vaccine to protect people against flu strains with pandemic potential, including the H5N1 bird flu virus that's been raising fears.

"After a rigorous review, we concluded that continued investment in Moderna's H5N1 mRNA vaccine was not scientifically or ethically justifiable," HHS Communications Director Andrew Nixon said in a statement.

"This is not simply about efficacy — it's about safety, integrity, and trust. The reality is that mRNA technology remains under-tested, and we are not going to spend taxpayer dollars repeating the mistakes of the last administration, which concealed legitimate safety concerns from the public," Nixon said.

Let me put this stat here;

Globally, from 1 January 2003 to 12 December 2024, 954 cases of human infection with avian influenza A(H5N1) virus were reported from 24 countries. Of these 954 cases, 464 were fatal (CFR of 49%)

A case fatality rate of 49%, and they have decided that's more acceptable than developing a vaccine. If it evolves to become more infectious in humans it will be a disaster, that's the only thing saving them at the moment, and the more it spreads among chickens and livestock the more likely that is to happen. Oh yes, just to mention, they aren't actually keeping track of or even trying to control spread anymore!

https://www.npr.org/2025/05/28/nx-s1-54 ... d-flu-mrna

[pipbarber]

While on the subject of RFK:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... rt-studies

The citation failures come as Kennedy, a noted skeptic of vaccines, criticized medical publishing this week, branding top journals the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine and Jama as “corrupt” and alleging they were controlled by pharmaceutical companies. He outlined plans for creating government-run journals instead.

That would be a world's first fictional medical journal.

Maga isn't governing reality, like all extreme ideological movements, they are governing to invent reality. It always ends in disaster.

[stylofone]

A recent story brought a new strategy to light by countries being attacked by Trump via tariffs and etc, it's called the "TACO" strategy. Laughingly it stands for "Trump Always Chickens Out," basically it comes down to, if you sit there long enough and do nothing Trump will eventually back down, and having seen what's happening it appears to be a good strategy!

DId you see his reaction when he heard about "TACO"? He DID NOT LIKE IT! The journalist who asked him about it was a woman, so he called her "nasty". It wasn't as bad as his tantrum when he was asked about the Qatar plane bribe, but still nice to see him get smacked.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/28/econ ... t-question

[stevebrooks]

While on the subject of RFK:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... rt-studies

The citation failures come as Kennedy, a noted skeptic of vaccines, criticized medical publishing this week, branding top journals the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine and Jama as “corrupt” and alleging they were controlled by pharmaceutical companies. He outlined plans for creating government-run journals instead.

That would be a world's first fictional medical journal.

Maga isn't governing reality, like all extreme ideological movements, they are governing to invent reality. It always ends in disaster.

It may actually be subject to legal action, one of the supposed authors of one of the papers used has stated that she never wrote that paper or contributed to it, so if it is a terrible paper in a fake journal it could seriously harm her reputation as a researcher, got to wait and see which way this goes, but it won't be nice!

[stevebrooks]

Good news everyone, the tariffs are....oops sorry no bad news, the good news was yesterday, today is another day and the tariffs are going up again!

Import tariffs on steel will be increased to 50% from June 4th! Yes you read that right, 50%, funny that trump announced that at a time when Nippon Steel is investing in the US Steel company.

“We’re here today to celebrate a blockbuster agreement that will ensure this storeyed American company stays an American company,” the President said.

“You’re going to stay an American company, you know that, right?”

Well no, they are no longer a US company, they are now a Japanese company with a factory in the US, and if that factory proves unviable what exactly does he think the fourth largest producer of steel in the world is going to do? The mans delusional, you don't sell off a US company then claim it's still American, it's international now, it's global, and guess who is at the moment screwing up global trade and business. I wonder if Nippon Steel knew Trump was going to double tariffs on importing steel? I wonder if in fact that was part of the deal? They get the factory, imported steel gets destroyed by stupidly high tariffs and they make huge profits, Trump gets a kick back and everyone's happy! Sounds like that was the plan all along.

https://www.news.com.au/finance/busines ... a9f849c41a