Christel Libiot 🌊☮️🇺🇦🏳️‍🌈🌊💚🌎

What happens when Europeans find out how poor they are? The Europoor? Nothing. That’s what happens. Americans ring the White House every morning to ask what the GDP is today, the way the rest of us check the weather. The trouble is that GDP is what you get when you stick Jeff Bezos and a man sleeping in a Walmart car park into a spreadsheet and take the average. It tells you the country is rich. It does not tell you that a hundred million people inside it are quietly not. GDP measures how much money sloshes around. It does not measure whether any of it ever reaches you, or what sort of life you get to live once it does. It also, rather conveniently, doesn’t mention the bill. Because the whole American miracle is being run on a credit card that has been on fire since the Reagan administration. The federal government owes nearly forty trillion dollars. The households owe another eighteen. Car loans, student loans, medical debt, a mortgage the size of a small principality, and a Visa bill that arrives in an envelope you have to open with tongs. This is the country lecturing the rest of us about prosperity. This is a man pulling up to valet parking in a leased Lamborghini and calling himself rich because nobody at the table has yet asked to see his bank statement. Run any household like that and the bailiffs would be through the door by Thursday. Run a country like that and apparently you get to be on the cover of The Economist. And this is where the whole sermon falls apart. Because on every single thing that actually makes a life worth getting out of bed for, Europe wins. Not by a bit. By a humiliating distance. The food. The streets. The holidays. The pavements you can walk on without being flattened by a Dodge the size of a small barn. The cities built before the invention of the strip mall. The Tuesday afternoon that contains an actual lunch, rather than a protein bar eaten standing up over a keyboard. The summer that contains an actual summer. Pick any parameter that matters to a human being who is alive and would like to remain so in reasonable spirits, and Europe is ahead. Often by a mile. Sometimes by an ocean. So no. Europeans are not about to find out how poor they are. We found out years ago, had a long hard look at the alternative, the debt, the diabetes, the drive-thru funerals, and decided we’d really rather not.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ If you like what you read, follow Gandalv on X: @Microinteracti1

“Superpower Suicide” is a concept to help understand the approach of the Trump regime to the rest of the world. We are fighting a war for no reason we can name, losing it, and covering our defeat with genocidal and apocalyptic propaganda. snyder.substack.com/p/superpower-s…

Harvard University is offering a FREE online course on the US Constitution! Understanding our Constitution has rarely been more important. Enroll in a free, short, engaging online course. HarvardX: American Government: Constitutional Foundations | edX edx.org/learn/governme…

Jewish trauma is real. The Holocaust was real. Antisemitism is real. And none of that makes the genocide of the Palestinians any less real.

In these days of sorrow, fear, and unwavering hope in God, I feel closer than ever to the beloved people of Lebanon. The principle of humanity, inscribed in the conscience of every person and recognized in international law, entails a moral obligation to protect the civilian population from the horrific effects of war. I call on the parties in the conflict to declare a ceasefire and urgently seek a peaceful solution.

Watching Trump teeter on the edge of blowing up the world economy because of a combination of hubris, strategic incoherence, mendacity and outright stupidity, might be the most extraordinarily depressing thing I have observed in my entire life, or read about in any other period.

100000%

People who dislike Israel should not conflate it with American Jews -just as people should not conflate the PRC with Chinese Americans or ISIS with American Muslims. And (not but) synagogues should not say "We stand with Israel" because it encourages that conflation. It makes congregants less safe but, more importantly, given what Israel is doing, it's morally indefensible. It's like a Russian Orthodox church saying "We stand with Russia" after the invasion of Ukraine. peterbeinart.substack.com/p/lessons-from…

International news is more accurate than US news.

The orange felon is happily setting the world on fire whilst completely destroying the United States because he’s a vindictive racist depraved criminal pedophile tyrant with a vengeance. Don’t blame me, I voted for Kamala Harris.

@LindseyGrahamSC @POTUS 🤮🤮🤮

Honored to have David Ellison as my guest to @POTUS’ State of the Union address this evening.

Amazing moment on French TV. A French judge explains how Trump sent people from the US Embassy basically trying to intimidate her during Le Pen's trial for embezzlement - something they've done to other judges around the world My English sub-titles 👇

@GOP_is_Gutless @BraddrofliT Greenland is not for sale...

@BraddrofliT He never said he was going to seize it. You stupid pathological lying, criminally corrupt piece of shit. He said he wanted to purchase it.

The U.S. House and Senate have enough votes to prevent President Trump from trying to seize Greenland.

If Trump seizes Greenland from Denmark, does that mean that all Americans will be entitled to: Free healthcare with no deductibles? A free college education? 52 weeks of paid parental leave? 5 weeks of paid vacation? Because that’s what everyone in Denmark and Greenland has.

@CBSNews No way to know if it is true. He fled the scene

BREAKING: The ICE agent who fatally shot Renee Good on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis, Jonathan Ross, suffered internal bleeding to the torso following the incident, according to two U.S. officials briefed on his medical condition.

Just heard a Minneapolis pastor being interviewed on MSNBC. He was protesting after the shooting yesterday, and saw ICE intimidating a “Hispanic-looking” woman. He told the ICE agent to take him and leave her alone. The ICE agent pointed a gun at his face and asked him if he was afraid now. The pastor said he was not. They handcuffed him and put him in a vehicle and asked if he was afraid once again. The pastor said he was not. They finally released him and said, well you're white it wouldn't be any fun anyway. There is no separation between Nazis and ICE. #DemsUnited

This bears repeating today: Trump's Big Ugly Bill tripled ICE's budget and paid for it by kicking millions of Americans off of Medicaid and by taking food aid away from families. More terror. More raids. More chaos. Less health care. Less food. That's the choice they made.

From the Outside, America No Longer Sounds Like Itself This is what people are talking about around the world today. A lot of us are sitting here listening to the United States and thinking: do Americans hear how this sounds. Because from the outside, it sounds like a country coming unglued, impulsive, and willing to throw rules out the window the moment they get in the way. And what is honestly shocking is how normal it seems to have become inside the US. People repeat the talking points, argue about the usual teams, and act like this is just another news cycle. But the rest of the world is hearing something else entirely. We are hearing threats. We are hearing contempt for allies. We are hearing a willingness to take what you want because you can. That is the kind of behavior Americans used to point at in other countries and say, that is not who we are. Now it is coming from Washington, and people abroad are not guessing anymore. They are concluding. In North America right now, Canada looks like the only adult in the room. Stable, boring, predictable, democratic. The kind of country you can actually trust from one year to the next. Maybe Americans do not feel the change because it is happening from the inside. But from the outside, it is loud. And it is not a good sound.

@MollyJongFast And very uncomfortable 😣

This is very strange