Bear Pit: now the sole domicile of politics at LuLa

[Robert Roaldi]

Distraction works: so far, it’s keeping US and Israel head honchos out of court and avoiding facing serious charges and possible prison holidays. The tactic isn’t new, and here in Spain, corruption has been a finely honed skill, with absolutely nobody beyond falling to the mixture of the charms and hubris of temptation, and the belief in permanent good luck and power.

FWIW, I am currently seeking refuge in my, what, fourth? watching of Justified. John Wick got about the same number of viewings, but when I came to the stage where I could see the dialogue coming up, I thought to myself no, enough already. There is more reward in going to bed instead.

If you haven't read the novels of Elmore Leonard, I highly recommend them. Good stories and the best dialogue ever. Start with City Primeval, set in Detroit. Freaky Deaky is a close second.

[Robert Roaldi]

Why did Trump et al move Ghislaine Maxwell to a cushier jail? Who was clamouring for that? It's not like his pardons for the Jan 6th crowd, which was probably done, in part, as a way to "own the libs". No one on the so-called "left", not Obama, not Hilary, not the ACLU, not even Tom Hanks, nobody was advocating for the release of Ghislaine. They had her dead to rights for sex trafficking, arrested, convicted, sentenced, done and dusted. How could even his most zealous boot lickers justify this action to themselves. If all Trump did was go to some parties where bad things were going on somewhere else in the building, the way lots of other people did and likely still do, he could easily have teflon'ed his way out of that. Why bring more attention to something that is supposedly not there? People now can't help but wonder if what he is covering up is worse than the actual cover-up itself. These guys just aren't any good at this, are they.

The real-time tests of martial law lite might distract people for a while, camo and guns attract a lot of attention on news bites, but how many black-mayored cities can he afford to invade? I know there isn't much real news media left that isn't corporate controlled that can investigate these things, but they're not ALL his toadies, are they? Surely the images of the military patrolling D.C. must bother some people who claim to believe in American "freedom". Not long ago, they were apoplectic because they were asked to wear masks to reduce the spread an air borne pathogen, but now they're ok with masked ICE agents with no name tags rounding people up off the street. How do they square that circle.

If I were an organized crime Don, I'd be tempted to dress some of my boys up in ICE gear and have them round members of rival tribes, drop them off at collection points. If any real ICE agents objected to the lack of paper work, I'm sure a few greenbacks would smooth the way. How do we know those ICE gangs are real?

It occurred to me that if I were in the US illegally, I might be best off to apply for a job with ICE. Great place to hide. They're growing so rapidly that their recruitment arm is probably not doing proper due diligence these days. And if I got unlucky and they discovered me, I could probably rely on them covering up the SNAFU, maybe pay me to shut up.

It also occurred to me that Trump, Vance and the rest seem to have forgotten about Panama and Greenland. I thought they were really important. Weren't they?

There's a contradiction floating around here these days. In support of the USA, Canada has large tariffs on Chinese EVs. China, meanwhile, has large tariffs on Canadian canola, a huge cash crop for Canada. I don't see why we have tariffs on those EVs. It can't be to support the US, Trumpistan hates EVs anyway, so why would they care? I think Canada would be better off letting those Chinese EVs into the country, might help bring down the ridiculously high prices of EVs in general. They are supposed to be much easier to build since there is no complex piston engine to assemble so why do they cost so much. I'll buy into the idea that production volume of batteries were not high enough at one point to benefit from economies of scale, but that argument is getting old. Also, China makes small urban-only EVs, a class of automobile that would be most welcome, imo.

[degrub]

American manufacturing capacity won the war. Let unrestricted outside manufacturing dump below cost goods into the country, yes, they are cheaper and a win for those buying them, but you gut the technical and process knowledge of the large American manufacturers. Flat on your feet when the physical conflict approaches.

How fast do you think we can make up the large number of anti-missile missiles  that Israel and Ukraine have used from the US stockpile ? It takes months and months if not a year to do that. i know of one small manufacturing plant that is on war footing now (has been for a while) as they make a critical item for those missiles. It would take a while to increase that physical capacity, at least.

[Robert Roaldi]

I couldn't make this up. A Republican Congresswoman asserts that there is evidence of "interdimensional beings" https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5451464-luna-lawmakers-evidence-interdimensional-beings/?tbref=hp. I wonder when she comes up for re-election, there's a race worth watching. I'm surprised she's not in Cabinet.

[Robert Roaldi]

I think I may have found something for those National Guardsmen in D.C., to do, they can track down fake ICE agents. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/28/civilians-impersonating-ice-officers. I wonder if DOGE would call this efficient.

[digitaldog]

I couldn't make this up. A Republican Congresswoman asserts that there is evidence of "interdimensional beings" https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5451464-luna-lawmakers-evidence-interdimensional-beings/?tbref=hp. I wonder when she comes up for re-election, there's a race worth watching. I'm surprised she's not in Cabinet.

Like, who did you think created the Jewish space lasers? 

[Robert Roaldi]

Like, who did you think created the Jewish space lasers? 

Oh right, what was I thinking.

[PeterAit]

Somewhere, ICE was heading for a Subway sandwich shop and a pissed customer threw a sandwich at an agent. Bondi is making a big deal of this and the guy is charged with felony assault. Your justice department at work!

[Robert Roaldi]

The Nvidia China export "deal" is quite interesting. Another "free market" success story, I wonder if this was what Adam Smith had in mind. You want to do business, you have to give your government a cut as Patrick Boyle explains https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d2pCt8JomQ. What can go wrong.

[Robert Roaldi]

Somewhere, ICE was heading for a Subway sandwich shop and a pissed customer threw a sandwich at an agent. Bondi is making a big deal of this and the guy is charged with felony assault. Your justice department at work!

I saw an online clip of a large group of police/agents going to arrest the guy. Must have been some sandwich. I think I read that the judge later dropped the felony charge. If I were the sandwich shop, I'd send some free lunch sandwiches to the DOJ, get some video of the delivery. They'll never be able to afford better publicity.

I wonder what happened to the guy who threw his shoes at President George Bush.

[Rob C]

He probably never got them back. You know, souvenirs?

I saw that Putin and Trump concluded their meeting in Alaska with no progress for the country most vitally concerned, other than a vague offer to slow the killings if Ukraine gives up the Donbas. Of course, the meeting was considered a great success… some of us thought that sort of perspective on what success means belonged to the Scottish Nationalist Party; seems they only borrowed it.

Isn’t there some kind of international arrest warrant hanging over Putin’s head if he steps out of Russia? Maybe he and Trump think Alaska kinda still, like half belongs to Russia? ;-) Oh the empty, self-righteous threats we all toast with such glee!

[Rhossydd]

Isn’t there some kind of international arrest warrant hanging over Putin’s head if he steps out of Russia?

The USA isn't part of the ICC, so they couldn't do it.

An interesting comment by an opposition MP here was that Trump's dealing with Putin like in was the USSR in 1980 and they were still an international super power. Now they're a second rate economy and much of the country could be described as having third world status.
Their military failure in making so little progress and burning through so many resources should have lessened any reputation further.

[degrub]

but not their nuclear arsenal.
Iran wants to have the same influence....

[Rob C]

The USA isn't part of the ICC, so they couldn't do it.

An interesting comment by an opposition MP here was that Trump's dealing with Putin like in was the USSR in 1980 and they were still an international super power. Now they're a second rate economy and much of the country could be described as having third world status.
Their military failure in making so little progress and burning through so many resources should have lessened any reputation further.

Maybe the opposition MP has it right - and so, on that point, regardless of his camouflage position as jester, is Trump. Putin apparently comes from a KGB ethos so, effectively unopposed, why would he change style or tactics? It isn’t at all certain that much of Russia ever did emerge from the stage of subjugation and poverty it seems historically to have enjoyed/suffered. For sure, those with the wit, connections and opportunities for turning wealth their way seem to be more visible, what with all the international fashion bibles, designer labels and shops selling glamour and symbols; bans and taxes go so far, but those can’t stop client states being routes for otherwise hard-to-get items coming in from an all too willing commercially driven West. That spending money has bought huge tranches of Spanish real estate.

On several levels it could be said that nothing ever changed other than the names of those enjoying the fruit of power and political position. The old spooks are probably exactly the same as ever they were, everywhere, only with some additional new toys to deploy.

Maybe a destroyed Ukraine isn’t exactly what Putin needs. We all know how expensive a destroyed Germany became for those who supposedly won WW2. I’m sure it hasn’t escaped Putin’s mind - any more than it has Trump’s - that global warming is having devastating results on food production and the viability of continued water supply to vast human conurbations. Whilst desalination might become an expensive alternative for coastal regions, how do you replace mid-country water from mountain-fed rivers when the snows are long gone? India is already discovering that in the north. If Ukraine is the wheat engine for so many countries, why would Russia miss that point and not think of how it could benefit from owning those resource-providing areas… its tundras are melting and turning into swamp, what happens when the process is completed?

[Rhossydd]

I’m sure it hasn’t escaped Putin’s mind - any more than it has Trump’s - that global warming is having devastating results

If you think Trump understands or cares about climate change I've got a bridge to sell you.

[Rob C]

I’m not so sure Trump’s as daft as he makes out. The more I see of him, the more I think he’s acting a part to achieve two prime objectives: to unseat the confidence of anybody dealing with him; to condition the voters to getting used to his mercurial shifts of policy on pretty much everything. After a while, he becomes the capricious uncle from whom not much is expected, but hey, he is your uncle, and better the devil you know…

Meanwhile, he manages to accumulate lots of wealth and do pretty much whatever he pleases. That, at the very least, takes street smarts and a certain cunning.

Regarding your bridge for sale: I've just bought one in Venezuela; you’re a month too late! ;-)

[Robert Roaldi]

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Meanwhile, he manages to accumulate lots of wealth and do pretty much whatever he pleases. That, at the very least, takes street smarts and a certain cunning.
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There seem to be a lot of Americans who think that whatever is good for Trump is good for the country. Seems bizarre to me but a lot of things that people do seem bizarre.

If the US wants to go it alone, well ok then. The rest of the world's countries then have no choice but to not include the US in their plans.  It won't be painless, but sticking with Trump is painful too. Seems like a lot of trouble for the US to go to, not sure what for, but that's their business.

I've often thought that American culture has an undue regard for hero worship. At the moment, for some, the hero is Trump. He's old and not in great health so there will be a reckoning soon enough. Like many egocentric control freaks, he has surrounded himself with lightweights. When he's gone, they'll most likely start eating each other, do they know how to do anything else? I mean, can you see people like Vance, Hegseth or Bannon inspiring the next generation. They may do some damage in the meantime of course, mostly to Americans, but they voted for them so that's only fair.

I would have hoped that more people would be upset at the current disregard for habeas corpus, but there probably aren't many people who know what that is, let alone why it's important. But that's not just an American failing.

[Robert Roaldi]

They're denying retirement benefits to trans soldiers that they tossed out, https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/transgender-air-force-1.7603653.

Now there's a country worth fighting for.

[Rob C]

Retrogressive steps like that are never going to be fair to those personally affected, or even look fair to the casual onlooker.

Whilst I can understand why an anti-“different” philosophy makes sense in the inevitable stress of a military scenario, the time to think about that was before the welcome signs were hung out. Pressure groups that brought that about should have been stared down right at the start of it, but even the blind can see that political correctness is, of itself, a perversion of the normal rules and mores of established western culture. To me, it’s very much an extension of the crazy idea that every child leaves school with some kind of a scholastic gong, one worthless or otherwise.

I think PC is nothing more than just another transatlantic notion that was exported from US universities to their hapless counterparts in Europe who have always tended to feel intellectually open (thus somehow superior) to all manner of new-thinking bullshit. Instead of enlightenment, it led to the disgraceful behaviour of students forcing visiting speakers off platforms and being cancelled for daring to call out naked emperors. I guess few things can be as mistaken as callow, educated youth. Especially with its belly full of subsidised beer from the student bar.

[Robert Roaldi]

Excerpts from a Substack entry re the so-called summit in Anchorage,



In Anchorage, the scene looked less like a wartime summit than a coronation for a czar. American troops unrolled the red carpet, jets roared overhead, and Donald Trump stood waiting like a blushing debutante to usher Vladimir Putin into the backseat of the Beast. Putin, wanted by the International Criminal Court for abducting Ukrainian children, got the full pomp-and-pageantry treatment usually reserved for allies. Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the democratically elected leader fighting to keep his country alive, has learned the hard way that his White House welcome consists of condescension, scolding, and lectures about gratitude. Red carpets for war criminals, contempt for democrats, there’s your foreign policy in a nutshell.

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Felshtinsky notes that the “joint military exercises” Russia is preparing in Belarus this September look eerily similar to the ones that in 2022 morphed into a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He warns that these drills could be the prelude to another strike, either deeper into Ukraine or westward into the Baltics, with Lithuania a likely first target. And he fears Trump’s secrecy with Putin, his willingness to sideline NATO, and his relentless pressure on Zelenskyy to “take the deal” may add up to something catastrophic: an implicit U.S. green light for Russian expansion.
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It’s the kind of posture that has Europe in a panic. Leaders are now dispatching their own “Trump whisperers”, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, into the Oval Office alongside Zelenskyy in hopes of babysitting Trump and preventing another February-style humiliation, when Zelenskyy was berated over his wardrobe and his supposed lack of gratitude. Macron and Starmer are convening war councils, Baltic leaders are praising Trump’s vague mutterings about “security guarantees,” all in the desperate hope of restraining him from unilaterally signing away Ukraine’s future on Putin’s behalf. In the polite language of diplomacy, they call this “bolstering Kyiv’s chances.” In plainer terms: they don’t trust Trump not to sell them out over dessert.
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This is how Trump’s world works: a hotel printer leaking state secrets, ICE agents accidentally looping strangers into fugitive manhunts, national security officials adding journalists to chats about airstrikes, and a U.S. president rolling out the red carpet for a war criminal while telling Ukraine to “take the deal.” It’s not diplomacy. It’s a clown show staged at the edge of a live minefield. Putin left Alaska with legitimacy restored and the U.S. president parroting his script. Zelenskyy will arrive in Washington flanked by nervous Europeans praying their presence can keep Trump from turning the Oval Office into a closing scene of The Apprentice: “Volodymyr, you’re fired. Donbas, you’re hired.”

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follow me on Substack at marygeddry.com and @magixarc.bsky.social