Simon Tisdall, a well-respected UK journalist and pundit, published his final column this week. He’s been with the Guardian and its Sunday paper the Observer since 1979, and has chiefly covered foreign affairs. He lays out the case for giving up on trying to forge a closer relationship between the UK and the US.
And while his argument isn’t just about Trump, he does point out that Trump represents an opportunity to step back from the madness of both the US and Brexit:
Billy-no-mates Britain faces a particular problem, post-Brexit. Its nuclear weapons, armed forces, security services, defence industries, financial markets and export businesses are inextricably in thrall to the US imperium. The UK clings desperately to a sense of “specialness” to sustain fading self-belief.
Yet Steve Witkoff, Trump’s useless Ukraine envoy, calls Keir Starmer’s plan a “pose”. Vice-president JD Vance, the intrepid Greenland explorer, mocks the UK as a “random country”. Some weird geezer named Hegseth claims we are “pathetic”. What depth of insult, what degree of disrespect, would convince Britain’s too-nice prime minister to stop propping up collapsing transatlantic bridges?
Such rudeness and condescension do not come out of nowhere. We British know; those ugly Americans learned their imperial arrogance from us. What’s new is Trump’s debasement and corruption of America’s constitutional and democratic tradition. Moral authority is being lost, and with it the right to lead.
Tisdall is a leftie, sorta, but since SignalGate broke I am hearing this sort of rhetoric on the right as well. I won’t sully this site with actual links to the Telegraph and the Daily Mail, but here are a few screen grabs I’ve collected over the last week:
That’s the Telegraph, a/k/a the Torygraph. Janet Daley is a fellow American expat who started out as a Berkeley-educated hippie, moved here for grad school in the 60s, and seems to have moved to the right sometime in the late 1980s.
Here’s the Mail, blood-gargling psychopaths to a one. It’s kind of amusing how confused this front page is. They’re mad, but they’re not quite capable of blaming Trump just yet:
And here’s the BBC:
The media is turning against us. The British public is, too – while still broadly considering the US an ally, new YouGov numbers show that Britons are less keen on America than they ever have been – and this poll was in the field before the group chats story broke:
The only branch of UK society that can’t quite bring itself to step back from the US is the Labour government. Part of this is Starmer’s spectacularly misguided bet on AI as an engine of growth (back in January he said he wanted it “mainlined into the UK’s veins”). By tying the country’s economic future to a technology overwhelmingly controlled by US firms, he has also put the country in the position of having to tread lightly on economic issues that could anger Trump or his Big Tech allies – a thing that only 14% of Britons seem to think is a good idea.
Starmer still seems to be most worried about Reform UK gaining ground. It’s hard to understand why, given that Labour has comfortable majorities, that Reform has been ripping itself up with its own infighting recently, and that a growing body of evidence shows Trump’s antics are poisoning the well for far-right parties throughout Europe, as this article in the Economist notes. This is also in spite of the fact that the next election is, like, four years away. You’d think that someone feeling penned in by far-right loons would seize on the opportunity Tisdall describes in his column to put clear blue water between himself and Trump in those four years. But here as at home, center-left leaders seem at best paralyzed, and at worst content to blow their chances.
Happy Sunday to you, too. Open thread, but as always, I am interested to hear what other US expats are seeing in the countries where they live.
We Need to Very Publicly Hand Out 
Steve LaBonne
Tisdall is politically unclassifiable, and often as not rather dim, but he got this one right.
Rose Judson
I am glad to hear someone else say he’s a bit dim; I thought I was missing something. Still, broken clocks.
Betty
At the moment, the US political story in the Caribbean is Rubio’s attack on Cuban medical assistance. Leaders are pretty much unanimous that the attempted blackmail will not work. The countries need that assistance. Here in Dominica, the Cubans make up a large percentage of the specialists.
Gvg
These are rude crude people. They insult everyone, including others that think they are part of their coalition. They insult Americans, women, blacks, disabled, wounded veterans, war hero’s, poor people, middle class people, people who pay their taxes, anyone. Sometimes to their faces, often behind their backs. Have you ever heard of any of them quietly praising someone for being nice? Naturally they also insult every foreigner including the governments they are responsible for dealing with for the service to their country. Haha. I return to anger at my fellow voters (the ones who picked Trump AND all these other feral republicans)
Steve LaBonne
@Betty: A right-wing Miami Cuban who lied about his parents leaving after Castro’s revolution rather than 2 years before it is surely someone everyone in the Caribbean should trust, amirite.
cain
@Betty:
Watching lil Marco lose all his respect with Cubans is deserved.
Betty
@cain: He is the ever shrinking Li’l Marco.
p.a
I know they’re incompetent, but can we be sure these leaks (excepting the idiot Hegseth’s operational one) are not “oops, look what I did!” incidents to further the dissociation with Europe for Putin’s benefit?
Steve LaBonne
@p.a: When extreme incompetence meets extreme malevolence, it’s hard to know in any particular case which one is in the driver’s seat.
p.a
@cain: What we need is some of the old-line Floriduh Cubans to be swept up and shipped off, not just the “not our types” targeted so far.
p.a
@Steve LaBonne: That’s like “you can’t tell satirized fundamentalism from the real thing”!
Nina
“get rid of those Cuban doctor, USAID can send you new, uh, nevermind…”
RepubAnon
The leaders of the Democrats and Labour parties are still lost in triangulation. We’re not in the 1990s any more, and we’re not in the privatization is good era, either. It’s time go fight the oligarchs via increasing taxes and regulations.
Baud
@RepubAnon:
Biden tried that. It doesn’t work.
Steve LaBonne
@RepubAnon: I have some hope for the Democrats, but none for Starmerite Labour.
Eolirin
The reason why some of the political leaders closer to the center are coming across as flatfooted, and I’d put Starmer and Schulz in this category far more than Schumer, it’s because the conflict we’re in right now isn’t about right vs left politics in an abstract values sense, it’s about whether billionaire oligarchs are going to be able to have power over everyone else or not.
The status quo up until the last couple of decades wasn’t a global cabal of the ultra rich vs the rest of the world, but it very much is now, and that cuts across the political spectrum in a different way than past conflicts.
Trying to keep massive wealth on the same side as democracy is no longer possible. And being put into that position is going to be fundamentally disruptive to a bunch of shit that was otherwise standard operating procedure and central to a lot of how society worked.
The closer the politician is to the power structures of wealth, the harder it’ll be to recognize that the rules have changed, and the greater the instinct will be to try to accommodate those structures.
Steve LaBonne
@Eolirin: All of this- well said.
Eolirin
@Baud: Biden didn’t really try what might work which is active and aggressive prosecution of the wealthy on whatever grounds can be identified, because there is not a billionaire on the planet that didn’t break some law to get there.
Also going after all of the tax shelters.
We also didn’t have the legislative support we need to enable that to the greatest extent possible, and you really need multiple terms of that kind of effort to get it to play out effectively.
The IRS changes would have made incremental progress towards that, but we lost so they’ve been reversed.
But that’s really what’s going to be necessary in the long run.
Steve LaBonne
@Eolirin: But unfortunately it won’t be possible unless a lot of people wake up and decide they don’t want to be serfs of the billionaires, and vote accordingly. I don’t know what it will take or whether it’s even possible.
Baud
@Eolirin:
Trump was subject to two indictments. SBF was convicted. Elizabeth Holmes was convicted. Trump is palling around with billionaires and pardoning rich crypto scammers. Why should I believe that people would have cared if Biden had done something more in this area?
I agree that we need bigger majorities in Congress and multiple terms. But we can’t get there if people don’t reward the first steps. And they don’t.
Eolirin
@p.a: I’m not sure this is going to end up being in Putin’s benefit, though we’ll have to see how things shake out.
An energized Europe that moves away from it’s far right in response to the US going crazy and that weens itself off of historically fickle and inconsistent support from the US will be far less constrained in their actions to curb Russia than the previous status quo.
It does require that they get there though. But an even more unified and integrated EU bloc could completely replace the US, in every respect, on the global stage if they get their shit together.
And this is providing a lot of motivation to do that. It may be that Putin would have benefited more in the long run from tepid US leadership creating an illusion of stability for Europe while Russia continued to chip away at their social institutions through far right and far left politicial proxies.
But it is contingent on them adapting in the ways they need to.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Eolirin: “Elite impunity” is a big problem. Heather Cox Richardson draws the line back to the forgiveness granted to the Confederacy.
The problem we have now is, as you indicate, hugely corrupt oligarchs who have also amassed political power. Oliver Bullough’s Moneyland documents this in detail. To my mind, Putin is the top of the oligarch heap and probably is richer than Musk.
Eolirin
@Baud: I don’t think people would have cared!
But I do think if the people running the anti-democratic organizing and social media misinfo ops were all either broke or in jail that we wouldn’t need to be to be worrying about what people care about so much.
Zuckerberg and the Mercers and Elon Musk have all contributed to far more serious problems than people like SBF and Holmes, who were prosecuted primarily for stealing (not just but also) rich people’s money.
Eolirin
@Eolirin: Like, at the end of the day, you can’t truly beat a pro fascist movement without breaking its funding mechanisms and propaganda networks.
We need to find a way to do that if we have power again or we’ll just keep ending up back here.
Jackie
I got nuthin to add – other than what are the odds if Vance runs and wins, he’d cede his power to FFOTUS? I don’t see that scenario happening.
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
I believe the consensus is that he was doing it wrong. Or stumbled when he walked. Or some other thing that was all his fault & why we lost. Ask the FTFNYT, they seem to know everything.
MazeDancer
May the UK continue to come its senses. One assumes the Canada insanity would help.
Harrison Wesley
@Jackie: He’d throw Trump under the couch, I mean, bus?
Barney
“By tying the country’s economic future to a technology overwhelmingly controlled by US firms, he has also put the country in the position of having to tread lightly on economic issues that could anger Trump or his Big Tech allies” – and this is a huge problem for Labour, because Big Tech is demanding the end of the Digital Services Tax (about £800m/year) – introduced by the Tories, so it’s not as if it’s some commie plot:
Trade minister Jonathan Reynolds has refused to rule out scrapping digital services tax (DST) as he failed to deny reports the government was considering the move.
Speaking at a Q&A in London’s Chatham House, the trade minister said DST had not been created in a way that it could “never change”.
Asked about reports the government was considering scrapping the tax as an incentive in a UK-US trade deal, Mr Reynolds said he shared the chancellor’s commitment “to making sure tech companies pay a fair amount of tax in the UK”.
He went on however to admit the US had expressed “concerns” over this but insisted it was not “a major part of the conversation” as trade negotiations continue.
Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds refuses to rule out scrapping digital services tax | ITV News
hells littlest angel
I welcome the world’s hatred. Seriously, we are so fucking dumb and arrogant that we are incapable of learning any lesson that doesn’t involve getting our faces smeared with shit.
Steve LaBonne
@Melancholy Jaques: Just like post-COVID inflation, it’s a universal problem (in this case a problem for center-left parties around the world) that somehow was also uniquely Biden’s fault. Jesus wept.
CindyH
@hells littlest angel: I’m with you except I want my daughter to be able to move abroad.
Eolirin
@Melancholy Jaques: I don’t think this was Biden’s fault as such, as much as what was needed would have been seen as a massive overreach by almost everyone until we were in a crisis as bad as this one is likely to be.
But we do still need to actually do something big there or we’ll be stuck in this cycle until it kills us.
Baud
@Eolirin:
My guess is that Trump breaks whatever cycle we were in. I don’t have any clue which way we’ll head after Trump, but it won’t be the same cycle.
Geminid
@Rose Judson: Ironically, Prime Minister Starmer shares the same name as Keir Hardy, the fiery coal miner who was one of Labour’s founders. I’ve taken to calling Starmer, “Keir Hardly.”
Eolirin
@Baud: Yeah, that’s fair. I’ll rephrase; if rebuilding doesn’t involve neutralizing the power of malignant billionaires and their political and social influence networks, we won’t be able to get anywhere good.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Melancholy Jaques:
@Eolirin:
I think Biden’s mistake was seeking reelection at his age and unpopularity, whether deserved or not. The people around him, including his family, should’ve convinced him to not run again and allow a primary to take place. Maybe they tried behind closed doors, I don’t know.
Was there a guarantee it would’ve resulted in a Democratic win? No, but the June debate and the fallout from it was hugely damaging. I think given more time, it would’ve been possible to beat Trump given the election was so close
Kelly
On a lighter note:
After watching a documentary about dogs we got a few puck shaped buttons that many dogs use to communicate. This morning we introduced them to 9 month old border collie Daisy. Mrs. Kelly set one by the door that says “Outside” and one by her bed that says “Cookie” At first she treated them with suspicion and concern. “How did Mom’s voice get in that puck and is she still alright?” After 3 hours she is now comfortable retrieving the treat waiting on top the Cookie button but doesn’t push the button. She still wants us to move the Outside button before she’ll go outside. She’s a smart, ambitious girl I think she’ll catch on and tell us what’s on her mind.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Eolirin: agreed. There’s an international industry devoted to hiding the assets of the ultra-wealthy. As a side effect it funds criminal enterprises, wars and terrorism. This has to change.
[ETA, it’s not even a secret anymore, the Panama Papers and Pandora Papers are old news.]
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
It may be that we agree, only using different words, but I think Trump & MAGA have already broken the cycle.
More to the point, the majority of white people have emphatically voted against democratic government because it doesn’t inflict enough pain on the people they don’t like.
Ksmiami
@Gvg: all they deserve is brickbats and firing squads. No, I really don’t care how we get rid of them. But destroy them we must.
lowtechcyclist
Since this is an open thread, I’m sitting outside on the deck in the sunshine, enjoying the warm (nearly 80 F.), breezy day, and eating a bowl of ice cream.
Can’t beat that with a stick. 😊
Ksmiami
@Eolirin: yep. Complete denazification including getting rid of Fox et al. No more tolerance for the intolerant and the rts lies.
Eolirin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): There’s no way to tell if that would have made things better or worse. And I don’t think it really matters at this point.
I’m always going to care more about identifying which trends and dynamics are operating in the now than spending a lot of time trying to figure out how we could have avoided getting where we are. It’s only useful if it can inform action, and when the operational environment is fundamentally different because of events, like it is now, those lessons are more likely to be misleading than useful.
I don’t know if you play any online or competitive video games, but it’s a lot like trying to evaluate a single balance change without looking at the context of the entire set of changes; theorycrafting almost always ends up being very wrong, even if it can sometimes point you in useful directions. The real insights come a little later after people can play with the new changes long enough to figure out where things actually are instead of where they think they should be because it’s almost impossible to process individual changes in the abstract without incorrectly evaluating those things in the context of how things used to work, and it’s usually literally impossible for anyone to process those changes globally just inside their heads.
So it’s really important to train yourself to look for context changes.
The pandemic and related disruptions were also a context change, even if the time period immediately leading to the election felt more “normal”. There’s a ton of almost invisible social and subtle economic dislocation and especially individual trauma that we aren’t really processing as existing. It’s really hard to know what would have worked.
Ksmiami
@RepubAnon: and jail time.
Eolirin
@lowtechcyclist: Honestly, this is probably the right approach for right now.
Gin & Tonic
@lowtechcyclist: Yesterday there was a 40+ degree differential between NYC and Boston.
Eolirin
@Gin & Tonic: Hell, yesterday there was something like a 30 degree shift from the day before that in the Hudson Valley.
trollhattan
@Kelly:
I’m unqualified to have a dog smarter than me and thus, no border collie for sure. Good luck to you, talking buttons or no talking buttons!
tobie
A propos the tectonic shift in political alliances, Olaf Scholz announced Germany’s alliance with Canada today in the face of US tariffs. America’s self-immolation continues apace and so many Americans turn a blind eye to it.
Parfigliano
@Steve LaBonne: Unfortunately many of those “serfs” are convinced they are one magic step away from being fabulously wealthy and then they too can break every rule without consequence.
Parfigliano
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Plus Putin has nukes and Elon probably doesn’t.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Yes, that too. A nuclear armed Mafia state is a bad idea.
Princess
@tobie: Canada and Germany, oh isn’t that interesting.
https://www.reuters.com/world/eu-ready-respond-us-trade-tariffs-says-germanys-scholz-2025-03-30/
lowtechcyclist
It’s been on my mind that the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere’s ride is less than three weeks away. There absolutely needs to be some observance of this. We fought kings then, and by God, we’ll fight one now.
UncleEbeneezer
This would never be possible until voters give us the Congress and SCOTUS to allow this to happen. And I have yet to see any evidence of a voting-majority large enough to give us either, in my lifetime. Candidates running on this angle can’t even win the Dem Primary, let alone a massive Dem landslide (with coattails) in the General.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
The fascists are coming!
The fascists are coming!
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Baud: too late. They are already here.
Geminid
@Harrison Wesley: J.D. Vance is a problem for Trump. Vance is publically supportive of his boss, but can I see Vance reaching past him to his MAGA voters, especially the Isolationist America Firsters. That was one thing that stood out in the notorious Yemen Signal chat.
Vance makes Trump look old, which he is. The contast was apparent at the Oval Office meeting with Zelensky. Trump could not dominate the Ukrainian president and came across as wishy-washy. Then Vance stepped in and upstaged Trump by standing up for him. It was a BossWeasel move I thought.
Many people saw Trump’s and Vance’s conduct at this meeting as discreditable, and it really was. But I looked at the social media reaction among MAGA people and saw a different story. They saw aging cattle baron John Wayne and his trusty ranch foreman Gary Cooper facing down an arrogant Mexican bandit general.
And they remarked upon the young foreman’s firmness. Trump hates to be upstaged by anyone, but he was in that meeting and not just by Zelensky. And Trump was upstaged by the one man in his administration he cannot fire.
That alone must be source of resentment. Trump made Vance but he cannot unmake him. J.D. Vance is not that formidable a politician in his own right, but his position makes him Trump’s number one rival.
And Vance is shrewd enough to exploit this situation without showing any overt disrespect or disloyalty. He knows Trump is going downhill mentally and physically and has no political heir. If he plays his cards right, Foreman Vance can inherit the MAGA Ranch.
mrmoshpotato
Bravo to the Canadians who put this up.
Darkrose
@Eolirin: I just want to say that as someone who plays Final Fantasy XIV, this analogy resonates so much right now. Nothing like watching people freak out over the patch notes only to discover why changes were made once the patch drops.
prostratedragon
This …
… and this (see picture) …
… reminded me of
this scene, where Susan Alexander Kane says to her husband, “You never give me anything I really want.”
Steve in the ATL
On a related note, what’s a safe and reasonably affordable place from which to commute to Brookline, MA?
schrodingers_cat
@Steve in the ATL: Framingham MA, its a half an hour drive
kindness
Well Rose….I would say I just don’t understand Labour’s leaders. But then I could say the same thing about a bunch of Democrats. It doesn’t need to be mentioned that I think Republican leaders are from Mars and we all wish they’d just go back there.
TF79
“blood-gargling psychopaths to a one” lol, will have to keep that in my back-pocket for future Daily Mail references
divF
@Baud: The only way we get those majorities is if enough of the Trump voters get their hands burned badly enough on the hot stove. There will always be the 27% who will believe that Trump’s economic plans are like the Gom Jabbar: the pain, however intense, causes no lasting damage, and that enduring the pain proves your superiority. That still leaves enough to get the enduring majorities we need to remake the system.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: By people do you mean white people?
Eolirin
@UncleEbeneezer: The last time we pulled it off we had the great depression and ww2. Things may very well get that bad again.
Gin & Tonic
@schrodingers_cat: He doesn’t have to go that far, Newton is fine, and only 10-15 minutes.
Steve in the ATL
@schrodingers_cat: thank you. I’ll share that with my friend and swear that it comes from a reliable source!
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Voters in the aggregate. I don’t particularly care how we get to our majority or, what is really needed, supermajority.
Baud
@divF:
That’s the hope.
schrodingers_cat
OT: I am thinking of doing an art challenge for the remaining 9 months of the year, the goal is to have fun, explore my artistic style.
100 compositions using all the mediums I own and all the surfaces I own, including digital.
They will be
Landscapes
Lettering
Portraits (animals and birds included)
Still Life
Patterns.
Comes to about 10 per month. IDK whether I should publicly document this (it will keep me honest) or not (some of my experiments are definitely going to turn out like I want them to)
Frank Wilhoit
To Tisdall’s point, aptly illustrated with a stock photo from Pearl Harbor, Churchill spent most of 1942 and early 1943 fighting against certain of Roosevelt’s advisors — notably, Adm. Ernest King, Chief of Naval Operations — who were advocating that the US concentrate exclusively on the war against Japan and not on the war in Europe. And to any appearance, neither Churchill, nor any of his people, knew that that position was also held by fully half of the American people. Britain had to keep food rationing in place for nearly a decade after the end of the war because we ruthlessly extracted immediate repayment for our wartime “loans”. Britain in (say) 1947 was a desperately poor country and has now been revealed by Brexit to be one still. Who should they think their friends are?
Steve in the ATL
@Gin & Tonic: I was in a meeting in Greensboro, NC, doing an acquisition, and as an ice breaker we each shared what we like to do for fun. Greensboro guy said, “on the weekends, I go out to the country and get away from all this city pollution and get some fresh air!”
Guy sitting next to me lived in Newton. We Just looked at each other and shook our heads, wondering if we could send the guy for a mandatory EAP referral….
schrodingers_cat
@Gin & Tonic: IDK how affordable Newton is, or what Steve’s definition of affordable is. Does it have to be easy to get to downtown Boston or the airport?
Tony Jay
I’m afraid there’s not much hope for the UK joining the Allied side in this tussle with the Axis of A-Holes, not while our governing Party remains in the grip of McSweeney’s grimly ideological thought-police. Their blinkered route-map is predicated on newnewlabourinc positioning itself as the only viable successor to the fallen Tory Party, swapping Labour’s old electoral coalition for the centre-right one that made the Tories the ‘natural party of government’ for generations and with it a billionaire donor base that will allow them to dispense with Union funding once and for all.
That means appealing to the things they think that traditional Tory electorate want from a centre-right Party – sucking up to the rich and powerful, punching down at the poor and vulnerable, and sticking two fingers up to Europe, hence all the kow-towing to The Pustule – they think that’s what they need to do to prove to their target voters how not-Labour this version of Labour is. Reform are their rivals for a big chunk of that electorate, hence the panic and the ever rightward shift of policy as they try to plant their tanks on Reform’s lawn.
But they’re idiots. Reform doesn’t have a lawn. Reform is just a rebranding exercise for tabloid-fed racism and populist resentment of elites and others. They’re a protest-vote sponge, and all newnewlabourinc has done since sliming into power is to try to validate all of the racism and provide endless justifications for the resentment. It’ll be bleakly funny to see their faces come Election 2029 and the scale of the protest vote against them, if funny is the right word, and it’s not.
Steve in the ATL
@Frank Wilhoit:
Probably not any of the former colonies they ruthlessly and brutally exploited.
schrodingers_cat
@Frank Wilhoit: Didn’t Britain give the African theatre more importance than the one in western Europe?
Baud
First I heard about this.
Tony Jay
@schrodingers_cat:
They thought they could fight limited campaigns on the periphery of Nazi power without getting immediately pounded into khaki paste by the Wehrmacht and so keep the Imperial waypoints open while they waited for the US to get on board.
As plans go, it was a very rational one. And it more or less worked.
Baud
@Tony Jay:
Good to see you again.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
I’m on Lurk Mode. Occasionally I’ll surface to take on supplies of tinned sardines and say horrible things about the zip-faced gimpanzees running Britain like a public toilet.
Baud
@Tony Jay:
This really is a full service blog.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
Occasionally one of the tins will be spoiled and the contents will stink like the gap between Vance’s couch cushions, but on the whole it’s cheap and salty and attracts cats.
Steve LaBonne
@schrodingers_cat: Newton is just as horrendously expensive as Brookline. Too bad because they’re great places, like many old streetcar suburbs in various parts of the country.
Geminid
@Tony Jay: The US Chiefs of Staff resisted the UK’s Mediterranean strategy. For one thing, the U.S. was responsible for logistical support and it was almost twice as far to Cairo as it was to Great Britain. The U.S. Chiefs prevailed in their view that Germany itself had to be attacked and the shortest pathway led through northern France.
This view was expressed in a meeting of the Combined Chiefs in 1943. The Brits were talking up an invasion of some eastern Mediterranean island which would better prepare for an offensive through what Churchill liked to call “the soft underbelly of Europe.”
Army Chief of Staff George Marshall set them straight. “Not one American soldier is going to set foot on that goddamned island,” Marshall told the British Chiefs, and they believed him.
Tom Levenson
@schrodingers_cat:
@Steve in the ATL: What’s “reasonably affordable” — and how much home does your friend need. (Also, rent or buy?) Last: public transport or car.
If public transit, the nearest commuter rail stop is Boston Landing (which is right next to Fenway Park), and Brookline is served by three Green Line branches (B, C, and D). That means a lot of western suburbs are available by commuter rail, and substantial swathes of Boston and Brighton are on direct Green Line routes to where your friend needs to go.
Brighton borders on Brookline (and Newton) and used to be quite affordable. It’s not so much any more, though it is somewhat cheaper than Brookline itself. And Boston is a city of neighborhoods; the center is wildly expensive, but there are more affordable areas that are still perfectly nice.
Gin & Tonic
@Steve LaBonne: For Steve, not even 1962 Petrus is expensive, probably.
Steve LaBonne
@Gin & Tonic: Oh he’s THAT kind of lawyer is he.
Tony Jay
@Geminid:
Yeah. Both sides of the argument had a point, but I think hindsight shows that the US policy of going straight for a slugfest with Germany ASAP would have led to carnage on a scale that could well have altered the course of the war effort. Dieppe writ large. It wouldn’t have knocked the US out of the war, of course, but a mushroom cloud over Berlin would have become much more likely.
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
Successful?
Frank Wilhoit
@schrodingers_cat: Yes, as part of a thought-out plan, which they again had great difficulty getting some of the Americans to understand. With the resources available to the British, the rolling-up of Europe would have had to begin in Italy, and operations in Italy were unthinkable without control of the Mediterranean. The American plan to begin with France could only work with American resources; then the Americans were able to tell Churchill, we are putting more men at risk, therefore we are in charge, you sit down and shut up.
kalakal
@schrodingers_cat:
They were not capable of mounting an invasion of Europe at that time, what they were capable of was stopping an Italian invasion of Egypt from Libya and the Horn of Africa from Ethiopia and thereby stopping the Axis from gaining control of the Middle Eastern oilfields. After they completely trounced the Italians at Beda Fomm, North Africa became a huge strategic black hole for the Germans, eventually more German troops surrendered in Tunisia than did at Stalingrad
oldster
@kalakal:
“…eventually more German troops surrendered in Tunisia than did at Stalingrad.”
Surrendered, yes: but then again many at Stalingrad were too frozen to surrender. Which location saw the greater total loss through either death or surrender?
BellyCat
@Jackie: Trump as VP, another possible scenario.
Bill Arnold
@divF:
The direction they’re dragging the USA, they will have no hands, just charred stumps.
zhena gogolia
@BellyCat: We don’t have a prime minister, so they can’t do the rokirovka that Putin and Medvedev did. But I’m sure it’s in their plans somehow.
BellyCat
Quoted for truth.
BellyCat
@zhena gogolia: Of course it is. Soft transition.
ETA: (If they can’t cancel elections.)
kalakal
@oldster: Stalingrad was far bloodier, there were far bigger forces involved. German casualties were c. 700,000 with another 300,000 minor axis involved.
At Stalingrad many fought to the death rather than surrender, knowing what awaited them.
Tunisia around 300,000 Germans, 100,000 Italians
Goebels considered the North African Campaign to be a total disaster, costing a 1,000,000 casualties/ pows and Tunisia to be a 2nd Stalingrad
Geminid
@kalakal: The Tunisia campaign worked out pretty well for all those German and Italian POWs. They got to sit out the war in the US.
Some of them were put to work on Albemarle County, Virginia farms. Albemarle used to have a camp housing Hessian soldiers captured during the Revolutionary War, 163 years before. A lot of them stuck around at war’s end.
I think the Tunisia POWs were all sent home after the war, but I met a German submarine sailor who stayed.
lowtechcyclist
@Tony Jay:
You win the thread with that one! Glad you stopped by, don’t be a stranger!
kalakal
@Geminid: A lot of Italian POWs stayed in the UK. Also a lot of Poles who’d escaped the Nazis but had very good reasons to not go back to the Russians
Steve in the ATL
@Tom Levenson: friend is looking to rent a one bedroom place with public transit to Brookline. Not sure the exact amount willing to pay, and I don’t know the market there at all. Access to Logan a plus!
frosty
@Geminid: The “soft underbelly” was Italy which was one of the most difficult campaigns in the whole European part of WWII. Nothing soft about a dug-in defense in mountains.
Kayla Rudbek
@Eolirin: behind every great fortune, a great crime – Honoré de Balzac
Steve in the ATL
@Steve in the ATL: should add that he’s going to work for a non-profit
schrodingers_cat
@Steve in the ATL: There is a direct airport shuttle from Framingham to Logan.
Steve in the ATL
@schrodingers_cat: excellent—thank you!
Ruckus
@Gvg:
The only side/point they have (and have had for some time) is HATE. They aren’t smart, they aren’t reasonable, responsible, rational. They want everyone to follow them because they are so great. Just ask them. And in a world 3-4 decades ago they might have gotten away with this. But it isn’t 3-4 decades ago. It’s today and we can discuss state, national, world bullshit in almost real time. Like we are doing right now….
dump and his pal dipshit are worth some money, which they think, such as it is, that they can be the top of the world and the leaders. But they aren’t suited to running a Salvation Army store, let alone a country. Because the world they want is the one that revolves around them, that honors them, believes them, worships the ground they walk on. And that ain’t happening because we can see who and what they are, and the mess they are making – in real time.
And it ain’t pretty. Not in any way, shape or form. They are fuckups, plain and simple and the entire world can see this in almost real time.
Ruckus
@kindness:
They might be better if they were from Mars.
They are all from county Bullshit. They all want to be the top of the heap, but they fail to understand that they stand on bullshit and ARE at the top of that heap.
Barney
And, as I feared above, Starmer is giving in, by offering to cut the Digital Services Tax to benefit Meta, X, Google etc.:
Starmer offered big US tech firms tax cuts in return for lower Trump tariffs | Trump tariffs | The Guardian
The Guardian understands the UK government is willing to reduce the headline rate of its digital services tax (DST) in an attempt to placate the US president, while at the same time applying the levy to companies from other countries.
The move, which would represent a significant concession to US tech firms, comes after the prime minister decided not to ditch the tax entirely as it currently raises £800m a year and government finances are already stretched.
The UK’s trade deal offer is understood to include a proposal to broaden the DST to bring smaller companies within scope, meaning they would contribute to a tax take which is forecast to increase to £1.2bn a year by the end of the decade.
As a result the 2% levy on the UK revenues of the big US tech companies could fall. Five have publicly said they pay the tax – Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, eBay and Apple – and some have lobbied the government to pay less, arguing that it discriminates against larger firms and should apply to profits rather than revenues.
Tax experts say that Elon Musk’s X is also likely to have paid the tax in recent years but the company has not said so publicly. Tech businesses that generate more than £500m in worldwide revenues and more than £25m from UK users are liable.
The economic Neville Chamberlain.