A 49.9% shift goes global. Trains almost reach the platform, planes nearly take-off the runway and ATM nearly give you cash and Visa almost works.

Frank wrote on Jan 4^th, 2025 at 10:18am:

Canada, America’s nearest neighbor, certainly felt the vibe shift on November 25 when Trump threatened to impose a 25-percent tariff on both Canada and Mexico on his first day in power unless fentanyl and illegal migrants stopped crossing into the United States from their territories. Four days later, Justin Trudeau was in Mar-a-Lago. The Canadian prime minister soon realized he’d bought a ticket to be trolled when Trump suggested over dinner that Canada become the 51st state.

Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum tried to hang tough, warning Trump that Mexico would “meet tariffs with tariffs,” according to The Economist. But when the two leaders spoke, her tone was emollient. Not long after that, the Mexican military seized over a ton of fentanyl pills—the largest hit against the opioid smugglers in the country’s history. Cause, meet effect.

The vibe shift has already had effects in Europe, too. Within days of the U.S. election, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen proposed that Europe should buy more liquefied natural gas from America in order to ward off new tariffs on European exports to the United States. It’s a little embarrassing, to say the least, that Europe continues to buy natural gas from Russia, which it otherwise excoriates for having invaded Ukraine. “Why not replace it [with] American LNG,” asked von der Leyen, “which is cheaper for us and brings down our energy prices?” That’s a pretty good question. It’s funny she never asked it until after November 5.

....

The reality is that we are witnessing the complete and total unraveling of the disastrous foreign policy that began under Obama and was picked up again by Biden, the perverse effect of which was to strengthen both Iran and Russia.

The series of blunders that consigned Syria to a hideous and protracted civil war and opened the door to Russia in both Syria and Ukraine began between July 2012 and August 2013, when the White House said that if Assad used chemical weapons he would be deemed to have “crossed a red line.” The regime used chemical weapons anyway. And the White House’s threat was empty; in August 2013, Obama decided to call off the planned retaliatory air strikes.

Worse, Obama then allowed the Russian government to broker a deal under which Assad handed over (some of) his chemical weapons. On September 10, 2013, Obama announced that the United States was no longer the “world’s policeman.” Five months later, Russian troops occupied Crimea, the annexation of which followed on March 18. In September 2015, President Vladimir Putin sent not only three dozen aircraft but also 1,500 troops to Latakia, Syria, and warships to the Caspian Sea.

On Obama’s watch, Putin established himself not only as the proud owner-occupier of the Crimean peninsula and a power broker in the Middle East but also as a troublemaker in Africa, hiring out the mercenaries of the Wagner Group to the nastiest regimes he could find south of the Sahara.

The signature achievement of Obama’s foreign policy was supposed to be his much-vaunted Iran deal. But the upshot of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was that the Iranians took the money they made from sanctions relief and diverted it to the likes of Assad, Hamas, and Hezbollah

Twitter suspended the Bee’s account in 2022 after it made a joke misgendering Admiral Rachel Levine, President Biden’s head of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. (In 2022, USA Today named Admiral Rachel Levine, a trans woman, Woman of the Year. Shortly after that, the Bee posted a headline that named Admiral Rachel Levine “Man of the Year.” And then the Bee’s account was suspended.)

The Bee was later reinstated when Twitter was taken over by Elon Musk, who said, “There will be no censorship of humor.”

These days, The Babylon Bee still gets fact-checked by Snopes and USA Today, which perfectly encapsulates our internet age: a parody page getting its jokes fact-checked because people really can’t distinguish between truth and humor.
https://www.thefp.com/p/seth-dillon-the-babylon-bee-vibe-shift

Boy Trudeau resigns.

Canada, America’s nearest neighbor, certainly felt the vibe shift on November 25 when Trump threatened to impose a 25-percent tariff on both Canada and Mexico on his first day in power unless fentanyl and illegal migrants stopped crossing into the United States from their territories. Four days later, Justin Trudeau was in Mar-a-Lago.The Canadian prime minister soon realized he’d bought a ticket to be trolled when Trump suggested over dinner that Canada become the 51st state.