Re: Understanding the US - Again
Posted: 20 Jan 2024 04:13
Five sisters seems like good advice. Too bad the Chinese can't take it!
Consortium of Indian Defence Websites
https://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/
Lol mort! Congress was notified about Mq9 sale. It is held back on our end of the CCS clearance stage.Mort Walker wrote: ↑20 Jan 2024 04:27 Here’s another good resource:
https://www.dsca.mil/tags/india
Notice the limited FMS sales the Biden admin came in. GoI knows this admin is India hostile and holding back purchase of the P-8I & the MQ-9 hasn’t been approved by the US.
Mort Walker wrote: ↑20 Jan 2024 04:16 With a dad like that no wonder his son carries on with the widow of his older brother.
Congress was notified, but it’s still not approved by DoD. Then the use of ITAR to inhibit the sale of GE 404/414 engines.Cybaru wrote: ↑20 Jan 2024 04:43Lol mort! Congress was notified about Mq9 sale. It is held back on our end of the CCS clearance stage.Mort Walker wrote: ↑20 Jan 2024 04:27 Here’s another good resource:
https://www.dsca.mil/tags/india
Notice the limited FMS sales the Biden admin came in. GoI knows this admin is India hostile and holding back purchase of the P-8I & the MQ-9 hasn’t been approved by the US.
The presidents son is not up for elections is he?Mort Walker wrote: ↑20 Jan 2024 05:51 Your previous statement didn’t add value, and anyone can make up stuff, but president’s son did do what was said plus worse.
Let CCS clear it and if it doesn't come and gets dropped then you have a point. Till then the ball is in our court.Mort Walker wrote: ↑20 Jan 2024 06:00Congress was notified, but it’s still not approved by DoD. Then the use of ITAR to inhibit the sale of GE 404/414 engines.
GoI knows this admin & is reluctant to approve any large scale purchase from the US.
Mort,Mort Walker wrote: ↑20 Jan 2024 06:48 The MQ-9 was approved by India MoD last May. US DoD would notify like it has with the 6 additional P-8Is (also awaiting CCS clearance) as seen on their website.
The Modi govt. will likely wait to see which admin comes to power in the US before making any large purchases.
Imagine a time-traveller from any decade in recent memory arriving in America in January 2024: they would encounter a country that would appear to have gone nuts. Millions of migrants stream illegally into the US at the highest rates in history, while the government in Washington prohibits border states from enforcing Federal law. Meanwhile, major cities such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles are routinely paralysed by angry demonstrators whose causes change from month to month (this month’s cause is “intifada”). Questions like “should doctors perform surgery on children to change their gender?” and “is it ok for the President of Harvard to routinely plagiarise the work of other authors?” are now seriously debated by reputable media outlets.
Americans now find themselves living in an oligarchy administered day-to-day by institutional bureaucracies that move in lock-step with each other, enforcing a set of ideologically-driven top-down imperatives that seemingly change from week-to-week and cover nearly every subject under the sun
Today, power flows from the top down, from a set of fantastically wealthy billionaires, to a national administrative class, and to a new layer of non-profit administrators, foundation executives and NGOs, which in turn employ a floating class of hundreds of thousands of grant-makers, organisers, case-workers and protesters who serve as the shock troops of the Democratic Party. In this role, they regiment the party’s identity-driven interest groups while receiving large amounts of funding from the billionaire class and the Federal government — thereby enabling the Party to serve as the broker between the oligarchs and the “disenfranchised” poor.
fter 2008, America’s rich continued to get wildly richer while the middle class lost ground, along with the poor. Unsurprisingly, income mobility has fallen radically, from 90% for children born in 1940 to less than 50% for children born in the Eighties. American life expectancy — perhaps the most basic gauge of how people are actually doing — is also experiencing a sharp decline, despite (or because of) the fact that America adopted a universal health care system more than a decade ago. What these grim statistics still fail to capture, though, is the feeling of utter, disorienting madness that pervades so many sectors of American life these days, from universities to corporate boardrooms to social media, where people seem to find themselves advocating causes which they are often at a loss to explain.
Barack Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, saw an opportunity to rubbish Republicans by making Democrats the party of the rich in the name of the poor. The policy of aligning the Democrats with the wealthiest Americans, while taking from the middle class and rewarding the poor with symbolic identity politics victories, was Obama’s creation — hardly a surprising coinage from a BLM-promoting Harvard Law School graduate who once told an intimate that the two things he wanted, as he left the White House, were a private jet and a valet. Obama’s continuing influence as a tone-setter for the Democratic Party, and within the Biden administration itself, should not be underestimated; there’s a reason why he became the first (healthy) former US President since George Washington who refused to retire to his farm (or the equivalent), instead keeping a large mansion in the heart of Washington.
Yet the unending stream of obvious policy failures that America’s elites have authored, both domestic and foreign – from the country’s immigration, income and education crises, to its failures in the Middle East and Ukraine — can hardly be blamed on old-fashioned bigots, of whom there are thankfully few in Washington. In reality, the identity-based vitriol of the country’s political, academic and media elites is not shared by most normal Americans — who actually have to live with each other on a daily basis. Which in turn suggests that the national obsession with race and group identity is a tool being employed from the top down, to fracture the possibility of democratic opposition to large concentrations of wealth and the rule of the bureaucrats.
In 2019, the last year for which statistics were available before the George Floyd riots, a total of 13 unarmed black men were killed by police throughout all of America, according to statistics compiled by the CIA-linked, oligarch-owned Washington Post. According to the Post, the number of unarmed, non-violent black men killed by white police officers in 2019 may have been as low as three, or as high as seven. No doubt both numbers are painfully high — but not nearly as high as the total of 7,300 black American homicide victims in 2019, the overwhelming majority of whom were killed by other black Americans, not to mention the thousands of white Americans killed by black Americans that same year. So perhaps America’s murder problem isn’t mainly the product of racism after all.
The cure for today’s American Crack-Up is to defuse the affair between our bureaucratic elites and a Big Tech oligarchy that is mediated by the diversity barons of the Democratic Party. The way to do that is to remove the legal protections that have allowed for Big Tech’s monopolies, and which killed off the independent American press, and then to curb the power of national elites by letting individual states make and enforce their own laws, as the US Constitution intended. Once the causes of the country’s current madness are removed, Americans may be able to see their own virtues and weaknesses plainly — and start acting like grown-ups again.
Her voters are neocon Republicans who wants wars and democrats (that too polarzied left wing democrats pumped up by media to defeat Trump in primaries which is preferable than defeating him thru judiciary which is more dangerous). These democrats will never vote for Trump. The neocon Republicans may vote for him or not regardless of Nikki
During the Iowa primary, there were Democrats temporarily registering as Republicans to vote in the primary against Trump (ie. vote for Nikki)vijayk wrote: ↑20 Jan 2024 20:46 Her voters are neocon Republicans who wants wars and democrats (that too polarzied left wing democrats pumped up by media to defeat Trump in primaries which is preferable than defeating him thru judiciary which is more dangerous). These democrats will never vote for Trump. The neocon Republicans may vote for him or not regardless of Nikki
It is hard for Nikki to do anything in this situation. Trump made some good move in his previous tenure to make sure the Supreme Court is loaded with conservative Judges. And that led to the reverse of Roe V. Wade. He has captured the while Evangelical votes. For the Republican primaries that is all you need. So I am betting Nikki will bow down after South Carolina.Santosh wrote: ↑21 Jan 2024 04:43 I was expecting Nikki to do much better after the anti-Trump candidates within Republican party bowed out in favor of her. But her 18% vote was boosted by Dems hoping to upset Trump in the primaries. This experiment will repeat in NH, altho much worse because NH seems very lenient with rules on who can vote in which primaries. Vivek has already endorsed Trump and Desantis' voter base is closer to Trump than Nikki. And Nikki doesn't bring much to the table. So IMO it would be either Vivek or Desantis for VP. Or someone like Stephanik who tore in to Ivy League presidents.
You touch on several lines of thought that I have also had when viewing this thread or any other forums/discussions where Indians discuss American politics.
Have we reached peak DEI? The unraveling of “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives had already begun—five states banning DEI programs; Google, Facebook and others cutting DEI staff; Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard—well before Harvard President Claudine Gay was demoted.
Author Christopher Rufo, echoing 1960s student activists, called the rise of DEI a “long march through the institutions”—a 50-plus-year ideology infiltration into universities, K-12 schools, government, media and corporations with the goal of telling us all how to live. That’s why I enjoy that the word “rot” is back in style to describe what is happening inside the walls of academia.
Like everything based on the writings of Karl Marx—seeing oppressors and colonial struggles everywhere—DEI was doomed to fail. The uniformity of thought known as intersectionality, fostered by DEI, meant all oppressed people must support all others who are oppressed. But that idea burst on Oct. 7 when Hamas raped, murdered and kidnapped Israelis. Many liberals, especially Jewish ones, couldn’t support genocidal “colonized” terrorists. Pop! The long march is in retreat.
By the way, ESG, or investing based on “environmental, social and governance” principles, peaked last June, when BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said he would stop using “the word ESG anymore, because it’s been entirely weaponized.” Never mind that performance of ESG funds has been sketchy and that BlackRock had been adding the label “sustainable” or “ESG” to funds and charging up to five times as much. Then a study published in December by Boston University’s Andrew King found “no reliable evidence for the proposed link between sustainability and financial performance.” Pop!
Most offensive to me was DEI’s devious underlying agenda: societal design. Blinded by fanatical devotion, activists were pawns for the cause of reshaping the world into a collective utopia to be run, of course, by progressive, self-identifying elites. That was the “my truth” that Ms. Gay invoked on her exit. Critical theories and Marxist techniques would take power from you and me, using big government as the enforcer.
The new societal design, embedded in DEI and ESG, envisioned idyllic communal progress. History shows this never works because power corrupts. Diversity meant ideological conformity. Equity meant discrimination. Inclusion meant blurring the sexes. Men winning women’s athletic events would be considered normal. It was all theatrics, like the tampons I’ve seen in men’s bathrooms on Ivy League campuses. Somewhere George Orwell is rolling on the floor laughing.
One goal of progressive societal design is to shrink—depopulation. Twenty-somethings now question having children. Net zero and degrowth, both World Economic Forum approved, are pushed via energy myths: carbon bad, cows bad. A plant-based chicken in every pot and two electric cars in every garage. They envy the merit-touting rich, shout “inequality” and wear “Tax the Rich” dresses. They tear down statues to erase history. How did we let this happen?
While Marxism is a means of gaining power to implement societal design, it quickly turns authoritarian. There was very little free speech at Harvard—the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression ranked it last of all colleges last year. Those against the societal-design agenda were shouted down. Dissent was met with accusations of privilege or cancellation. Conform or be cast out. On a larger scale, the Biden administration co-opted social media to censure opposing views.
I, like most Americans, am for diversity, but not when it’s forced or mandated. In a 2017 interview, Mr. Fink admitted BlackRock would use DEI tactics to “force behaviors” of corporations on “gender or race,” including via management compensation. Now that’s power.
This power inevitably leads to a march of intellectual corruption through institutions, which we’ve seen at Harvard, the Biden administration and elsewhere. Does national security adviser Jake Sullivan really care about equity or climate change? It polled well and put him back in power to implement his own societal design via “industrial strategy.”
The good news is that economics eventually outlasts the control freaks. Central planning loses. Real life is about markets that every day transmit trillions of price signals of human desires. Those prices inform production much better than any government bureaucrat or Harvard professor. Societal design—remember Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society?—requires government control. I’ll take freedom.
Preferred pronouns are fading. College admissions, and maybe hiring, based on race is illegal. DEI departments are being deconstructed. But while the DEI movement may have peaked, like that Monty Python character, it’s not dead yet. The feverish whining of those grasping for the last reins of power will probably get worse before DEI eventually dies with a whimper.
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A Miami Republican who endorsed Trump’s reelection has filed a bill for this year’s legislative session that could allow the state to hand out up to $5 million to the embattled Republican frontrunner for president. The legislation has already won the endorsement from Jimmy Patronis, the state’s Republican chief financial officer, who for months has been publicly calling for taxpayers to pay to defend Trump from criminal charges.
all your points are valid, but i would argue that the malaise of political discourse in america is something far more mundane and at the same time far more ugly, identity politics. This is the problem plaguing america as a country, in other countries, the discourse is around policies, i would say europe, other anglo countries not names america in this list; in us, it is as nuanced as red team good , blue team bad or vice versa, thus emboldened in their identity, the americans spread forth and spew opprobrium in every discourse, and its not that other countries have not taken cognisance of this nuisance emanating from the us, after the blm protests around the world following the floyd incident, it was a french minister i believe that went on to say that identity politics of the us is like a cancer in the worldAkshaySG wrote: ↑22 Jan 2024 01:30 You touch on several lines of thought that I have also had when viewing this thread or any other forums/discussions where Indians discuss American politics.
However I would like to provide a counter argument to some of the points .
1. The reason why we don't hear much from British and Canadian resident Indians (apart from the obvious point that there is just a lot more Indians in US as compared to the other two )is that politics in those countries has been much more dormant to the point where at times there has been no credible opposition. Labour has not been in power since 2010 and their last gov was a damp squib Gordon Brown while Stephen Harpers Conservative party was pretty tame by American conservative standards ... So there just isn't the hate ,chaos , outright hostility between the two main parties in Can,UK,Aus as opposed to US. Brexit has brought some of it back in UK and Canada is heading that way too , So I assume we will hear a lot more from those two pretty soon
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1749984852659560829?s=20if she doesn't drop out, she'll end up under investigation for "stuff she doesn't want to talk about"
Mitt Romney: “I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn't want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is is really appalling."
IMO, as always Republicans and Donald putting the country last and the party first!MCCONNELL told a closed meeting of Senate Republicans Wed that the politics of the border has flipped for Rs and cast doubt on linking Ukraine and border.
“When we started this, the border united us and Ukraine divided us.”
“The politics on this have changed,” McConnell then told his GOP colleagues.
This is ALL about Trump.
McConnell referred to Trump as “the nominee” and noted the former president wants to run his 2024 campaign centered on immigration. And the GOP leader said, “We don’t want to do anything to undermine him.”
“We’re in a quandary,” McConnell added.
“He's a very petty individual who will always put his interests ahead of the country's… Our country can't be a therapy session for a troubled man like this."
I think Trump was an exceptionally good president in relation to India. He made no noise when we removed 370.
It's not about election, it's about character of the person and the results from it. Understanding him will allow us to understand our relationship with US. That is why I posted these. They will have a bearing on every engagement with him.