| And they get to do it because the FTC has been totally defanged. It has nothing to do with Trump or oil. Sheeple indeed.

In March 2025, Mr. Trump fired the two remaining Democratic commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, basically consolidating executive control over the agency. This action effectively ended the agency’s longstanding statutory and bipartisan independence.

So, basically, Mr. Trump defanged the FTC. Who's the sheeple now?

Depending on the study, from 30% to 44% of Vietnam vets came back with PTSD. The stereotype of the unhinged 'Nam vet was thus not just a leftist conspiracy. Today, Vietnam-era veterans remain disproportionately represented in the homeless population.

If we have a draft today the level of resistance will cripple the country. Nobody will tolerate the Government pulling that. That move could break the country.

We've come full circle to the tech community deciding what's proper for our neighbors. ChatGPT is free to decide not to include adult stuff, and celebrity/CSAM should totally be illegal, but "The proper use of AI is as a tool, not as a friend, lover or therapist, and especially not as an addiction" is how we get the government regulating how adults use the tools at their disposal.

Aside from CSAM and defamatory stuff we don't have the right to decide what's proper for someone else.

Eventually peer to peer training (Petals using Hivemind, etc.) will lead the way.

At least they didn't do a Tumblr and have the feature put in, then wait for millions to be using it... and then yank the rug out from under them.

We saw how that ended.

Fortunately there are alternatives.

The Founding Fathers made a slave country where women, minorities and non-landowners couldn't vote. We already changed what the founding slaveowners made.

I hope you're willing to pay more for food and see food shortages which Trump has already caused after running on "but muh bidenflation" platform where he said food prices will go down (hint: they didn't).

As civilizations mature, entropy advances like a cancer and eventually rots the country from within. America's the oldest continuous governmental system around. We're well past our expiration date if you factor in how fast history moves nowadays.

We should have kept Biden. He might have died and still been more mentally here than Trump. Biden at least remembered what the Declaration of Independence and never declared a trade war with Mattel. He never tried to posture about conquering Greenland and was not going to invade Venezuela. Or a hundred other batshit / dementia inspired things Trump has done.

Most importantly: he didn't treat minorities or women like second class citizens.

Holy crap, that wasn't something I looked forward to reading this morning...

You don't get to come back a year (or a century) later and say, "Hey, I just found out what that painting is actually worth. Give it back."

Actually... Why not? You said yourself you're in the wrong and you certainly acted in bad faith, so why shouldn't your victim have their demand to annul the deal enforced?

As opposed to people with nativist and inward looking views, companies like Apple HAVE to work overseas, and if you keep following the US govt kool-aid, then you will only be able to do business with Western Europe and other allies.

Try to understand that a big part of the world actually sees the US as the big bad empire that they portray China to be and it makes sense that they ask Stewart to tone it down a bit.

It's not that China is a big bad empire, it's that Xi is an emperor who's unable to placate his people with promises of a better tomorrow due to China's economy having caught up enough that the rubber band has gone slack and dictatorships being inherently incompatible with the rule of law which a strong economy requires, so his only hope for survival is to placate them with promises of glory which makes a confrontation with China and West pretty much inevitable, and Xi knows that. It's the same deal as with Russia, US is simply being wiser than EU was.

Basically, what's business to Apple is a weapon to China, and China is a fundamentally hostile nation to anyone who doesn't think Xi would make a great world leader, which he wouldn't judging by everything I know about life in China and also because he's a genocidal tyrant. That's not "nativist" or "inward looking", that's simply realism.

I recently saw a very insightful interview where dictatorships are defined by things you cannot criticize, like the CCP in China, Kim Jong-un in Korea, etc. In the US the thing that will absolutely get you canceled will be talking about the Israeli lobby and the influence such a small group holds over US culture in general.

Seriously? You're equating getting canceled with getting disappeared?

Note that such a system would also prevent Slashdot from leaning left and censoring conservatives, which they're doing now by institution an idiotic "karma". Slashdot karma is all about politics. And Slashdot is left leaning. One could express that cutely as "CowboyNeal is an imbecile".

But you're not being censored. Your comment is right here, readable for all who care to engage with users with bad reputation. That you have managed to earn a bad reputation through your own actions does not reflect badly on Slashdot or CowboyNeal, it reflects badly on you. It is the consequence of your actions, in other words, your karma.

That most people ignore you doesn't mean you're being censored, it just means that they think you and your opinions are not worth listening to. That your response to this is that the government should force them to pay attention just serves to demonstrate that their judgement is completely right. It's not a political judgement, it's a judgement about you as a person.

Given your vitriol here, I think you know that too, and judging by the fact that you keep posting on Slashdot despite hating the place I doubt you're more welcome elsewhere either. So perhaps you should reflect on the only common factor for a change, try to see your self from other people's eyes and maybe, just maybe accept that you might actually be the one who's in the wrong and needs to change? It's painful, but so is eternal bitterness, and there is no government big enough to make other people like you, so those are your options.

Or links to any media that disagrees with my narrative.

Stick with Tucker Carlson and local militia rags to know the real truth.

PS: Being totally facetious of course. Then again at least 70 million voters actually feel this way. Wow.

Protectionist policies do work. Just ask China, they built their entire economic empire on a mountain of protectionism.