Ah_so comments

He’ll put down $350 and then appeal the rest, no biggie.

He's got to put down $430m for the two cases. And then he can appeal them. That's more free cash than Trump has, so he needs to go and raise some money.

Or rather the Trump Organisation does, as he can't be part of it for the time being. I imagine Ivanka will run it. The $83m he has to raise personally.

Lol, love this guy, he just marches on, speaking right now, he’s going to appeal, blowing this off saying back to the campaign trail.

Let him appeal and sink more of his election campaign money. Either way, he's got to find the money first, even to appeal.

NYC like California are on its last leg,

Last legs? These two states have to subsidise the red states.

not all that surprised by these Democrats and Soros backed individual,

The Demonrats and the Hungarian Jew you mean.

personally, I think Trump should leave the city, he can make even more money in other states,

They'll be celebrating.

let NY fall in despair and decay, everyone is leaving, crime, lack of police officers, illegals pushing people and businesses out, food and living costs through the roof, why?

Only in your brain and in the fantasies spun on Fox News.

Why live and suffer in despair and filth, just leave.

A good reason not to move to one of those low income trees states which are dependent upon the blue states for handouts. Filth, despair and religious fanaticism are never far away.

Other than that, love how this guy is stoic and marches on.

'stoic:

a person who can endure pain or hardship without showing their feelings or complaining.'

Given how regularly Trump throws tantrums, that's the last word I'd use to describe him. I'm not sure he marches in any direction, either figuratively or literally.

The trial judge didn't understand the basic fundamentals of valuation.

He does. That's the problem for Donald Trump.

Given this was at the low end of expectations, Trump can take some comfort. Although he won't see it that way.

But together with the $83m he has to pay, it will be more than the free cash he has to hand, so that means either borrowing more or selling something.

And it may mean Trump is no longer a billionaire, which will hurt.

Michael Cohen, his ex lawyer, went to prison for facilitating this. There's no doubt Trump was guilty of the same crime. He made the payment happen.

It's a clear open and shut case. Trump is going down.

There are very powerful people who do not want Trump to win the 2024 election.

Otherwise known as the electorate

If Japan Inc were in fact a company rather than a journalistic device, you would be seriously questioning it's business model and whether it required serious restructuring.

It's 'business model ' emerged as a rapidly growing educated workforce - it was the first to market with that model. It transitioned from low wage to high wage skilled economy easily, and again there was limited competition.

But now it gives itself outflanked on nearly all sides. It was caught napping by big Innovations where it should have been a leader (the smart phone) and has lost ground to China and Korea who were able to offer similar products more cheaply.

It needs to consider how it will face the future, but demographics means that it will have to kick harder just to keep its head above water. The current model means that it is being displaced and becoming irrelevant to the wider world apart from as a bucket list tourist destination.

Ha, just came back from an ecumenical conference in Paris, and the amount of well-heeled Japanese tourists I saw there spending large amounts of money like it was still 1989 was incredible. There are still many Japanese who are doing very well, thank you.

And yes, they were JAPANESE tourists.

This is a rather inane comment. Of course there are well-heeled Japanese out there - there always have been and there always will be. It says nothing about the wider picture.

We’ve already lost our rainbow to the LGBTQ+.

You can still use the rainbow whenever you want. And they can use it too.

The law is fair and clear.

The law is clear. It isn't fair.

he’s also known as Katayama, a high-ranking member of the Yaneya yakuza family which is affiliated with the Sumiyoshi-kai.

Nothing screams "high ranking Yakuza" like selling bottles of drink on the street.

What happened to the Trump-era border security measures? Instead they have stripped ALL border measures from the bill. Told you they weren't serious about the border and this is definitive proof of that. Voter beware.

You do realise that it was the Republicans who demanded that the border measures be removed from the bill?

I wonder what he's offered MAGA appointee Aileen Qannon. A seat on the Supreme Court, perhaps.

That’s ok, the man thing is, it’s all good and all the same, we should exit NATO, but that’s just my personal opinion.

What is it that you have against NATO? Even few years ago American conservatives weren't saying this, and now it's quite common, as we can see on this thread?

What has happened or what's changed to make people turn against NATO?

So true. everyone I talk to has had enough of it.

I would have thought that years ago no one even gave it a second thought, but now Trump, presumably with the support of the Fox News and Russian intelligence services, has made it some kind of big deal and those on the MAGA right think it is some kind of major issue, without realising that NATO is effectively an extension of US military power and influence.

There were no complaints when NATO and allies were supporting American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I dislike to agree with Trump however if NATO members want to run with the big dogs then they gotta pay their dues

The US is a highly militarised nation and chooses to spend nearly 4% of GDP on the military. The agreed NATO level is 2% of GDP - still a fairly high target. Britain and Germany manage it, France doesn't, at only 1.5%. But most countries spend between 1.5% and 2%.

But it isn't as though the US would actually spend less on defence if others increased their expenditure. It would still spend nearly 4%.

And European armies are growing in response to Russian aggression. But Trump only ever takes a superficial view of things and treats everything like a business deal in which there are winners and losers.

It is an antisemitic term, kickstarted even before Naziism appeared. It's derived from a bogus propagandic book titled 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'.

Zionism is a Jewish movement and many Jewish people identity as Zionists. The term was created by European Jews in the nineteenth century with the sun of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

How can Zionism be an antisemitic term when modern Arabs in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria are also semites?

Your splitting hairs. You know one perfectly well that anti-Semitism refers to hostility to Jewish people.

Stalin called Western left-wing sympathisers of the USSR "useful idiots".

The leader of Russia today has plenty of useful idiots - chief among them, Donald Trump. And closely followed by all his MAGA fans.

Trump is 100% right about the U.N and NATO. This is nothing new especially if you’ve actually listened to him speak about these countries not paying their fair share.

The Trump MAGA keyboard warriors are all experts on the budgets of NATO, and now apparently the UN (something the US want paying it fair share to Under Donald Trump).

NATO exists primarily as an extension of US military power to protect its vision of the world. There is an agreement that each country will spend about 2% or more of its budget on defence and if they don't currently, increase spending to this level.

But the fact that since countries spend less than this didn't mean that the US is spending more. The UK and France spend 2% or more. France is at 1.5%, but that still buys a large operationally effective army.

Which parts of the US military world be cut if France upped their military spending? None.

Donald Trump is not an intelligent man and only ever has the superficial grasp of anything and that is usually only in a commercial sense.

NATO and all the American military bases around the world are in the USA's strategic interest, the global pax Americana. But Trump can only see things at a mercantile level - if you are paying for something, you are losing and the other person is winning. That's all that matters to him.

To Trump these modest costs are a big deal because he can see (and only see) the financial costs. The benefits that derive from an American led NATO are lost on him.

He Dementia is worsening by the day, there’s no way he can complete a second term. I hope Jill is proud of herself just disgust.

Biden is displaying signs of absent mindedness that comes with age. No doubt about it. But it isn't dementia. A name confused here and there.

But Trump literally thought Nikki Hayley, a woman young enough to be his daughter, was actually Nancy Pelosi, a woman old enough to be his wife. It wasn't a slip of the tongue, it's genuine mental dementia.

And that's what separates the two - one a man who still has good judgement and Trump, a man who is clearly displaying symptoms of dementia.

In the end, we likely now have a Foreign Ministry with a damaged ego behaving badly by further wasting the court’s time with this apparently frivolous appeal.

Thw whole post was an excellent summation, but this comment in particular nails it. It is something seen elsewhere in Japan when its bureaucracy will fight hard to keep obvious wrongs wrong.

Speaking for myself, I have had access to hundreds of sources that have led me to believe me that Russia planned and started the conflict long ago

Putin has been planning this war for years. His big mistake was not starting it when Trump was still in power. Although that's not as big as starting it in the first place - Russian lines are still pretty much where they were 22 months ago, at the cost of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian lives.

They can have a fascist love in party together in front of hundreds of even thousands of inadequate man children and incels on X. It's going to beautiful.

Looking forward to the Obama and Biden and Bush war crimes trials seeing as they aren’t immune for their actions while President anymore.

All of these would fall in the remit of their official duties and so would be outside prosecution. This is why they haven't been arrested or charged.

Had they say, tried to overthrow the election by illegal means, they would have.

I hope this helps understand the difference.

I think the chances are that the Supreme Court so great it, b only to establish precedent. But the finding is very clear - Presidents are not immune from prosecution. That's why Nixon was pardoned - otherwise he would have been charged and tried.

As I commented on January 25 under another thread:

Places that snow regularly handle snow better than places where it doesn't snow regularly. Even in Japan, areas like Hokkaido and the Japanese alps handle it much better than Tokyo or West Japan where a little snow can cause major disruption.

This is what happens when there is a personality cult around a particular leader - people are prepared to commit violence in their name. A small minority of supporters, but a significant one.

As was evident on Jan 6, MAGA terrorism is the greatest threat to American democracy. In fact, even the language you read from some MAGA fanatics shows that they have been trained to put their leader above democracy e.g. "the USA is a constitutional republic not a democracy." - a phrase that entered discourse in late 2020.

3 of the 4 in Red States

The states with the highest crime rates are all Republican.