Some dude comments

I hope they let Vance keep speaking. He is doing a fantastic job at uniting Europe and dragging his own country's name through the mud.

What do Brits see crashing down

Well, not the price of eggs, that's one thing that's definitely not crashing down.

What is crashing down? Your country's international reputation. To us, and I imagine to anyone not in the republican cult, your leader has just outed himself as a Russian asset, and almost nobody is surprised.

Countries around the world laugh at us in open ridicule...except Russia - they laugh at us and congratulate themselves...

Unfortunately true, can confirm the first part as a UK citizen.

It's a genuine shame, as there are things about the US that are worthy of genuine respect, admiration even, but those things are being bulldozed in the name of I don't know what. Theocracy, maybe? Submission to Putin? Straight up revenge against perceived enemies?

So far, the only saving grace I've seen is Kendrick Lamar at the superbowl. He's more or less single handedly keeping America's reputation out of the lowest recesses of the toilet.

I think even we (Brits) are surprised at how fast it's all come crashing down. We were fairly sure that re-electing Trump would be a disaster for the US, but the new administration seems hellbent on taking a wrecking ball to everything at dizzying speed.

I think the Tao Te Ching nailed it all those years ago.

When the Master governs, the people are hardly aware that he exists.

Next best is a leader who is loved.

Next, one who is feared.

The worst is one who is despised.

If you don’t trust the people, you make them untrustworthy.

The Master doesn’t talk, he acts.

When his work is done,

the people say, “Amazing:we did it, all by ourselves!”

I hope the technicians at Nissan have some good fireproofing technology, as well as a heck of a PR team.

However long ago it was now, the scummier elements of the UK press threw a monumental fit when Craig was announced as the next Bond, because he had fair hair. I mean I enjoy a good Bond film, but the fanbase is often uncomfortably close to Simpsons Comic Book Guy territory.

Bond films are, first and last, entertainment, and if they entertain you they've done their job. Everything else is window dressing.

This almost beats the USA for irony. Runs on a typical anti-immigration and "family values" platform while being a lesbian (which normally wouldn't be an issue at all) and whose partner is an immigrant from Sri Lanka.

Couldn't make it up.

Oh boy.

Next Bond movie will be ten minutes of action and two hours and twenty minutes of product placement.

From the outside (i.e. outside the USA) this looks pretty unambiguous: the United States now openly considers itself an ally of Russia.

Still, they voted for it, so I guess they're fine with it.

It doesn’t matter. Next election Ukrainians will not go with Zelenskyy.

You reckon? He's led them through an invasion by a country 28 times their size, which has been going on for three years, he hasn't submitted, he's called Trump out for the deluded windbag he is, he's never once wavered in his stance that the only acceptable conclusion is for Russia to GTFO out of Ukraine. He currently has a 57 per cent or so approval rating, and he's rattled Trump so hard that Trump has to openly tell ridiculous lies about him.

I know that Americans prefer a leader who will bend over (or kneel down) for Putin rather than stand up for him, but in most countries that kind of leader is considered weak.

I know. I love in shinjuku and the place is a dump now. More illegal Airbnb’s are popping up just about as fast as getting them shut down

All of it? I mean Shinjuku does have some insalubrious areas, sure. I lived around the Okubo / Takadanobaba area for a couple of years, but can we generalise to the whole ward?

"Trade barbs" is an interesting way of putting it.

"Zelenskyy shows the world how to call out Trump for the addled Russian puppet he is, while Trump whines about it and lies through his teeth", while longer, may be more accurate.

"We rail against weaponising the government unless it works out in our favour".

I'm no historian by a long shot, but I don't think most people had "the next major international conflict / crisis will have Europe on one side and the US and Russia together on the other" on their bingo cards.

During my morning perusal of social media, one thing that keeps popping up is a prediction that many countries are now going to demand that tourists from the USA provide proof of vaccination against certain diseases, because the US can no longer be trusted to take effective, preventative measures against public health outbreaks.

I can just see it: more loud, ignorant Americans roaring at immigration staff about their rights and making the US look even worse on the international stage...

*NEWSFLASH for you, Hollywood:** no one is listening, and no one cares.*

Er, Hollywood is one of the biggest cultural exports the USA has. Whether you like what they produce or not, and for the most part I don't care for their schlocky, naive, morality plays, the very name "Hollywood" is practically a byword for "the movie industry".

Just because the movie industry tends to lean liberal (seen Kevin Sorbo or Chachi in anything recently? ROFL) doesn't mean that you get to decide that it's irrelevant.

At least he actually moved out of the USA I will give him that.

Can you blame him? I bet that there are millions of Americans who would do the same if they had the means.

Claiming this is some spontaneous, genuine, organic protest, with no outside funding, is nonsensical in the extreme.

Having an independent, decent foreign policy and sovereignty is his real crime, unlike the proxy next door.

Imagine Fico will take sensible action against outside agitators.

I get the feeling you won't be happy until Russia controls the entire world.

You might be waiting a while, as it's three years and they still haven't done whatever they were planning on doing with Ukraine.

Unique?

I read the autobiography of a martial artist who trained in Hong Kong, and he mentioned how "After training in the morning sessions, some of us would accompany Sifu to "yam cha" (drink tea) in the nearby Million Golden Dragons restaurant and there he would have his personal bottle of cognac from which he'd invite us to have a snifter".

*So no CHAMP, this isn't about "baking a cake." This is about a full-scale, systemic effort to silence, punish, and erase Christianity from public life.*

So here's a thing.

Is there also an effort to "silence, punish, and erase" Islam from public life? There are around 4.5 million Muslims in the US, representing about 1.3% of the population. I don't hear anything about attempts to "silence, punish and erase" Islam. Or Buddhism. Or Hinduism. Or Judaism. Or Scientology, and that's a super-scam even by the standards of other religions.

Yet a religion which is claimed by 70 per cent of the country is "being persecuted"? Cry me a river.

I can help you to avoid falling victim to these scammers. Send me a million yen to the following paypal account...

Isn't this the guy who couldn't name a single passage from the bible when asked?

That "English gentleman" image is false. The UK is probably the most violent place in Europe.

Depends where you go, how good your common sense is, and how you act. I spent two weeks there at the end of last year and ran into no trouble whatsoever.

Just a when you think he couldn't get worse....he does.

I respectfully submit that you erred in assuming he "couldn't get worse".

Given that far greater minds have tried to resolve this sorry mess for decades, I don't really see "the dumbest goddamn student I ever had" (to quote Wharton professor William T Kelley) getting anywhere with it.

This will of course please his followers (who see literally everything he does as "winning"), but social media's not buying it. I've been glued to my phone this morning, and Canadians in particular are not amused. They've sworn to do everything possible to avoid buying anything American. And it's not just Canadians. Even Americans are encouraging other countries to pivot away from US products. Read that again. Americans are encouraging people to not buy American.

There should be a groundswell of protest from local citizens, but I suspect that won't happen.

"I would go out and protest, but there's this really good new drama on NHK tonight, and it stars my favourite idol. I once camped out by his front door for three weeks to meet him, and he got a restraining order against me. I was so proud!" gushed a local resident.

"Gee, I wonder why we rank 118th out of 146 countries on the gender equality index?"

A reference for Brits of a certain generation:

"Tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be blaming....(DEI . woke libs, Canada, Mexico, Greenland, Biden, Harris....)"

You have to love Japan.

US headlines: Major trade war with neighbours! FBI top people fired! Musk takes control over social security!

Japan headlines: People throw beans.