US Erection 12 *AND* 16 *AND* 20 *AND* 22 *AND* 24 *AND* Beyond

[Chef Boi RD]

Got it

[Cornuck]

Got it

Thanks.

Make the Corner Fun Again®

[5thhorseman]

The memes were too predictable anyways which makes them unfunny. Good riddance.

[Cousin Strawberry]

Heading into the sewer, and I'm warming up my delete button.

Edit: trolling and endless back and forth does not equal free speech.

It's odd how many Canadians on this board are more dug in than the average American. They could care less it seems about the country they live in but they want to sit on Uncle Donald's knee and get him to pull a quarter out of their ear. Maybe enjoy a revel and a Roy Rodgers with their leather vests ,ten gallon hats and the dualing cap guns. Maybe a long mustache and a soul(less) patch.

Fuck that's funny

[Meds]

I've just locked the memes thread. this one is for civil discourse. Anyone not abiding will face warnings and suspensions.

Again - I'm done babysitting about bunch old men yelling at clouds. Grow the fuck up.

Now Corn is all pissed off and burned out.

Way to fucking go Doc.



In relevant news…..

Does anyone actually believe that The Donald wants to annex Canada or, failing that, force our impoverishment?

Or is it more likely that he’s doing his kick and scream negotiating…..

[5thhorseman]

Does anyone actually believe that The Donald wants to annex Canada or, failing that, force our impoverishment?

Or is it more likely that he’s doing his kick and scream negotiating…..

I don't think he has any long-term plans or objectives.

Canada, Panama, Greenland, it's all a show to please his base who want American be great again. Same for the "Gulf of America". I guess this makes some people feel good about the USA.

Similarly, DOGE is supposedly finding fraud and waste because his base think that needs doing (it probably does) but Trump doesn't really care to eliminate the deficit, he actually want to raise the debt ceiling and spend more, and extend the tax cuts for the elite.

Tariffs also are a show. It makes him look tough. Last time around the USMCA replaced NAFTA, but can you name any differences between them?

In the end it's just about his narcissism and enriching himself and his family. Maybe this term he'll start thinking about a legacy but I don't see it yet.

[Strangelove]

In the end it's just about his narcissism and enriching himself and his family. Maybe this term he'll start thinking about a legacy but I don't see it yet.

Well he's obviously a narcissist, but he didn't get into politics "to enrich himself and his family".

I think the reason he got into politics was to establish that "legacy" you speak of

... and to make America great again.

And who knows, perhaps he will.

[5thhorseman]

In the end it's just about his narcissism and enriching himself and his family. Maybe this term he'll start thinking about a legacy but I don't see it yet.

Well he's obviously a narcissist, but he didn't get into politics "to enrich himself and his family".

I think the reason he got into politics was to establish that "legacy" you speak of

... and to make America great again.

And who knows, perhaps he will.

Sure, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt but he's had 4 years already and I don't see anything on the horizon that would qualify as a legacy.

He doesn't have the political skills to create something like Obamacare.

He's not going to balance the budget like Clinton did; no interest in doing that. He wants to eliminate the debt ceiling, actually.

Indications are that DOGE will be a debacle. The cuts are broad when they need to be surgical.

Didn't he say he IVF would be covered for everyone? Is that it?

Sorry if I sound skeptical. I just don't see it. I think everything is short-term and feeds back into the narcissism.

[5thhorseman]

BREAKING!!!

Learning to live with your freckles is now considered woke?

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/juli ... 0KGMdIVgvw

Are any of the right-wingers here able to explain this one to me?

[Cornuck]

And there you were, wondering about his 'legacy'

[Strangelove]

Sorry if I sound skeptical.

Can't say I'm shocked Horsey.

[Strangelove]

BREAKING!!!

Learning to live with your freckles is now considered woke?

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/juli ... 0KGMdIVgvw

Are any of the right-wingers here able to explain this one to me?

Well I don't think any of the "right-wingers here" can answer that... yet?

Kinda early, no? Was it a mistake? Who knows.

Now.... ask us if we care.

[Strangelove]

.
I've mentioned before how Trump repurposed Obama's United States Digital Service

... and renamed it United States DOGE Service.

Well here's a great article revealing the shear genius of it...

https://libertymaniacs.com/en-ca/blogs/ ... be-stopped

10 Ways DOGE Hijacked the Deep State—and Why It Can’t Be Stopped
February 14, 2025 5 min read

No, really. Strap in. This one’s wild.

DOGE didn’t come out of nowhere. It wasn’t some rogue hacker collective, nor was it a secret executive order pulled from the depths of the Trump-Musk brain trust. No, DOGE was already there—baked into the system, waiting to be rebranded and unleashed. And once it was, there was no stopping it. Here’s how DOGE flipped the entire bureaucratic order on its head and became Washington’s worst nightmare.

1. It Hijacked an Existing Bureaucratic Monster
Back in 2014, the Obama administration created the United States Digital Service (USDS) to clean up the smoking wreckage of the Obamacare website. The intention? A small, agile IT unit to make sure the government’s digital infrastructure didn’t collapse under its own weight. But like all government projects, it metastasized. USDS didn’t just fix websites—it quietly embedded itself into every major federal agency’s data architecture.

By the time anyone realized how deep its tentacles reached, it was too late. Enter Trump. Enter Musk. Enter DOGE.

2. It Stole the Keys to Every Government Database
Trump didn’t need to create some shady off-the-books operation. The infrastructure was already there. The funding? Locked in. The personnel? In place. All he had to do was rename it. So he took USDS, slapped a new mission on it, and suddenly DOGE had full access to every federal database.

This was legalized espionage—except instead of targeting foreign adversaries, DOGE turned its gaze inward, burrowing into the deepest corridors of the U.S. government.

3. It Operates Outside Normal Oversight
DOGE wasn’t a new program, which meant Congress couldn’t defund it. The DOJ couldn’t sue it for overreach. It was already integrated into the bureaucracy. You can’t shut down the funding for a future agency that has already existed for a decade.

Even more incredible? It overrides conflicting executive orders. Refusing to comply with DOGE isn’t just bureaucratic disobedience—it’s a direct violation of presidential authority. That’s not some mild workplace insubordination. That’s an executive agency looking at the President of the United States and saying, "Nah, we’re good," as if they have their own separate branch of government. In theory, that kind of defiance should trigger an immediate purge of leadership, because in a functional system, agencies don’t get to ignore the guy whose signature signs their paychecks. But Washington isn’t a functional system—it’s a power-hoarding, rule-bending oligarchy of career bureaucrats who thought they could ignore DOGE. Wrong.

4. It Embedded Itself in Every Federal Agency
Every government office from the EPA to the IRS to the Pentagon suddenly had a DOGE team inside it. And here’s the kicker—they didn’t answer to the agencies they were embedded in. They answered to DOGE.

Imagine being a high-ranking official at the FBI and realizing some kid in your office with a caffeine addiction now has root access to every document you’d rather keep buried.

5. It Rewrote the Surveillance Game
Thanks to 44 USC Chapter 35, DOGE didn’t just monitor government cybersecurity—it owned it. This obscure little statute was supposed to keep federal IT from collapsing under the weight of its own incompetence. Originally, it was a bureaucratic snooze-fest designed to make sure government agencies followed best practices for handling sensitive data, keeping servers from catching fire, and not accidentally emailing classified memos to the wrong people.

But in the fine print, 44 USC Chapter 35 also gave sweeping oversight power to any entity tasked with managing federal IT security. Enter DOGE. When Trump flipped USDS into DOGE, this law became a golden ticket to full-spectrum digital dominance. It meant DOGE wasn’t just watching over federal cybersecurity—it had legal authority to dictate, access, and override every major government data system.

Every login. Every deleted email. Every conveniently “lost” document. DOGE had its claws in all of it before anyone even realized they’d been compromised. What was supposed to be an IT compliance rulebook turned into a bureaucratic backdoor that no one could close.

What started as a routine oversight mechanism turned into total visibility into every federal data system. Every login, every deleted email, every 'Oops, we lost those files' moment—DOGE had the receipts before anyone even knew they were missing.

They built a watchdog, and now it was watching them.

6. It Made Musk the Ultimate Backdoor Operator
Elon Musk didn’t break into the government. He was already inside. Between SpaceX, Starlink, Tesla, and federal contracts, Musk had his hands on key government infrastructure long before DOGE was even named.

So when Trump flipped the switch, Musk was holding the master key. Suddenly, the guy who turned Twitter into a free speech warzone now had backdoor access to the FBI, IRS, and SEC.

Deep state bureaucracy is the biological opposite of innovation. It’s like a Roomba trapped in a corner, bumping into itself over and over while insisting it’s making progress. It doesn’t have the clock cycles to outthink this maneuver, and it damn sure doesn’t have the creativity to counter it. The only people in government who do have the chops are probably in the back row eating popcorn, watching the show like Ron Swanson waving "slash it" pendants at emergency staff meetings.

7. It Became an Untouchable, Self-Sustaining Entity
DOGE doesn’t need new legislation. It doesn’t need constant budget approvals. It just runs.

Bureaucracies operate in a fog of red tape. DOGE bypassed it entirely. It’s a bureaucratic ouroboros—a snake eating its own tail, an unstoppable machine feeding off the system it hijacked.

8. It Trapped Bureaucrats in Their Own Web
The same surveillance state that was supposed to be wielded against the public had been turned inward. The people who once controlled the data now found themselves trapped inside the machine.

They can’t stop it. They can’t contain it.

DOGE is like a rogue AI, learning, adapting, expanding. Government officials are frantically trying to find ways to shut it down, but the system they built won’t let them.

9. It’s Turning the Deep State Against Itself
Washington is used to power struggles, but this one is different. DOGE doesn’t take orders from the usual bureaucratic overlords. It doesn’t play by their rules.

The same agencies that were supposed to be impenetrable fortresses of secrecy now have watchdogs inside their own walls. And no one knows how far DOGE will go before it devours the entire system.

10. There’s No Off Switch
This is the new reality. The government lost control of its own machine, and the worst part? No one can even agree on whether that’s a bad thing.

With DOGE having full access to everything, we are one executive order away from every skeleton in Washington’s closet being exposed.

Every. Single. One.

Obama thought he was building a government IT watchdog. Instead, he built the perfect bureaucratic skeleton key.

Trump saw the opening. Musk exploited it. And now, there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

DOGE hijacked the Deep State. And it can’t be stopped.

WOW eh?

[Cornuck]

An anarchists dream. ^

[Per]

I'm not that concerned about what Trump does to the US of A. Sorry, Corn.
They held an election, he won it, now they get to reap what they sowed.
It is a crazy system where you can accomplish a "landslide victory" with less than 50% of the vote, but hey, it is the system they have.

But I am concerned about the impact it has on the rest of the world.

Trump is all transactional. "What's in it for me?"
He doesn't understand or believe in the concept of the common good. He sees everything as winners and losers.
Nor does he understand the idea of building trust and forming alliances.

He is just a bully in a schoolyard, trying to figure out which kid's lunch money he can get hold of.

The USA has spent 70 years forming global institutions and forming alliances to help secure peace and order. Democrats and republicans alike.
Sure, they (and the Soviet Union/Russia) have often bent or disregarded the rules they've helped set in place, but overall, the period after WW2 has been the most peaceful and prosperous in all of human history. And we have all benefitted from it.

But in just one month Trump has made clear that this is all going to the garbage heap.

He is starting trade wars with some of America's closest allies, and he is threatening Denmark - one of the founding nations of Nato and an extremely loyal ally, who even joined the USA in the illegal ivasion of Iraq that many major Nato nations (eg Canada, France, Germany, Belgium) declared unlawful and refused to participate in - that he is going to annex part of their territory one way or the other.

And he is now choosing to sit down with Putin to discuss the future of Ukraine, and Europe, with neither Ukraine, the EU or Nato at the table.

As a result President Macron has called an emergency meeting today with leaders of several European countries (with Denmark representing the Nordic and Baltic countries and the Netherlands the Be-Ne-Lux cluster, to keep numbers down), including the UK, on how to move forward.

It is becoming increasingly clear to us Europeans that we can no longer rely on the USA as an ally, when they prefer to side with our enemy, when they threaten us both financially and actually physically. When they intervene in our elections, as Musk has attempted in both Britain and Germany, and openly mock as, as Vance did in Munich.

We have already ramped up defence spending, that started in 2014 already, after the invasion of Crimea and the Russia-sponsored insurgency in eastern Ukraine, and escaled after the full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but we may to increaqse it even further, and the concept of a European standing army is back on the table.

If the USA is no longer committed to Nato, we need to work on an independent solution to protect our continent.
Or perhaps cozy up to China.

And you see, this is not the world that any of us wanted.
But these are the conclusions we have to draw from the foreign policy presented by the Trump Administration.
The rules based world order in now scoffed at in Washington, Moscow and Beijing.

And if we now send a signal that wars of aggression will be rewarded, there will be dozens of conflicts popping up over the next few years.
There is not a single country that hasn't gained or lost territory over the past few centuries. But since WW2 the reasoning that "this used to be ours and it rightfully should belong to us" has not been acceptable and the expansion of borders through war has been listed as a war crime.
If this rule no longer applies, it's a free for all! And conflicts that have been gone for a long time are bound to reignite.

If we are the only ones still committed to a rules based world order, it will no longer keep us safe.
So we have to become more militarized in order to be able to fight off the inevitable attacks that will occur.

Which is sad. That money could have been used on health care, education and infrastructure.
Now we need to use it to make sure we are not invaded and annexed by the imperialistic forces in the world.

It really feels like it must have felt in 1938.