AMUSING, INTERESTING, OUTRAGEOUS, or PROFOUND

I bet he got a change order from the contractor, and upon seeing that saving the facade would coat more than zero dollars, said fuck that noise. Being greedy in petty ways is surprisingly common for people who already live a hyper-privileged post-scarcity existence.

Was it though?

Bill Burr said it best. “They need to be put down like fucking rabid dogs.”

"Trump is unAmerican! He's sold us out to the evil foreigners!" is the lie we need to keep telling ourselves in order to ignore the extremely All-American Thiels and Adelsons and Mercers who really are pulling his strings.

The end result of this Putin-fixation is a modern opposition Democrat party that clings to neocons in the Bush/Cheney cartel and plutocrats like Bloomberg, Gates, and Buffet in defiance of popular politics. Mass media keeps trying to make Communist Russia the boogeyman behind a very Capitalist, very American brand of corporate fascism.

Reelection

Exactly what i was thinking. As much as i'd like EU and its countries to be independent and have a better sense of unity, i feel like this is still benefitting Russia immensly in the end by severing ties with US the entire west will be vulnerable; with all these political tensions within EU countries themselves already it wont get any better...

Indeed, the man went BANKRUPT 4 TIMES. Let that sink in as a clear indication of his incompetence.

If you can go bankrupt to the tune of a billion dollars, walk across the street to another bank, take out a new billion dollar line of credit, and keep shitting in your gold plated toilets, then I'm not clear how you are the incompetent one.

Trump highlights the real dividing line between Rich and Poor in America, and its the proximity to cheap, easy lines of credit. If you can discharge a billion dollars of debt time and time again, while I'm stuck on the hook for a few grand in credit card debts or a tens of thousands in student loans for the rest of my life, its trivial for you to remain rich while it remains onerous for me to escape poverty.

they do demand other services like dissolving NATO

This isn't a demand from the Russians, its a demand from the paleocons and the libertarians. Long before Putin was mayor of St. Petersburg, guys like Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan were lobbying to remove the US from every international organization. And their ideas were well-received, in the same way Brexit and Yugoslavian balkinization and the parsing out of micro-states like Hong Kong and Singapore and Israel were well-received.

Building these ultra-wealthy megapolises, surrounded by high walls and armed to the teeth against working class dissidents, has been the project of the western ultra-right wing for decades. Ayn Rand lionized it in the form of Galt's Gulch. Heinlein romanticized it in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". Friedman and the Chicago Boys forced it onto Central America and the Caribbean states during the Reagan Era. Now Trump is making this vision manifest in the beating heart of the Republic.

American balkinization is a plutocrat final solution to federal regulations authored by elected authority. It is the mirror side of Lincoln's dire warning against A House Divided. For the class of American revanchists who revile a democratic state, this is a deliberate end game.

I got one for ya: How does no tax on tips help Russia? lol

Also maybe his stance and outlook on oil and his “drill baby drill” shit. I don’t see how the United States producing more oil helps Russia.

By not looking, not caring.

It's not that Russia is behind everything, it's just that Russia is a key part of their plan to establish a global kleptocracy ruled by the ultra wealthy

They feel like their plan can be more easily accomplished with a Russian empire than with a free Ukraine

A nothing burger is a claim with no substance.

There's tons of substance to this one, just look at the press conference with Zalensky, look at aid being halted to Ukraine, look at the yachts given to oligarchs, the deference to Putin, the extortion of Ukraine, the lifting of sanctions, the meeting in Helsinki, the disinformation campaigns and propaganda.