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False. That's the total of what countries in the EU spent on social protection benefits. The E.U. budget for that year was €186.6 billion https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-annual-budget/2023-budget/#:~:text=EU budget for 2023%3A Council,amount to €168.6 billion.

Are you setting yourself up as a rival authority to the CDC? Where do you disagree with the guidelines set by the CDC or similar health authorities?

Because the president has no legal authority to punish people for charging whatever prices the market will bear except for national security matters. Is access to a Kid Rock concert a vital matter of national security?

So France is an enemy because it's judiciary found Lepin guilty? Or it was an enemy before but now it's even more of an enemy because of the Lepin verdict? And you claim that enemies are deterred by this action but it's not a punishment? "Punishment, commonly, is the imposition of an undesirable or unpleasant outcome upon an individual or group, meted out by an authority[1][2][3][4][5]—in contexts ranging from child discipline to criminal law—as a deterrent to a particular action or behavior that is deemed undesirable.[6]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punishment It's laughable that you questioned my command of English.

Typical justification to flout the rule of law. Usually, it's serious issues that are invoked to justify that. But in this case, the issue in question is a trivial one. No one's life is endangered or welfare threatened because concert tickets are costly.

He can issue all the executive orders he likes. But are they legally valid? Is government by whim a good thing?

You pushed for a 50% tariff on France because of the verdict in this case. How is punishing France for a judicial verdict not an intervention?

Well, given that about 40% of adult Americans are obese, that's quite a lot with pre-existing comorbidities. And, of course, the anti-vaccination partisans claim that covid vaccinations haven't been proven to be safer than not getting vaccinated. Which is false.

Seems clear enough. You advocate for America's disengagement from Europe. But when it comes to an issue that you feel strongly about, even though it has no bearing on the interests of the United States, you advocate for forceful intervention.

If "do no harm" was to be strictly enforced, then the medical profession would come to a complete stop. There are always risks to be incurred in virtually any course of treatment. As for training the medical community to think for itself...you mean to follow ill-supported claims rather than the science? Where are those studies you claim support the case for linking autism to vaccination?

Because America's vital interests are involved in this case? Funny how your standards for US engagement in Europe vary depending on the issue in question.

It's always open to consumers to do without stuff and services in order to improve their ability to be able to afford a home and an education for their children. What is there about Trump's program that will promote that? And it's always entertaining to see the same people who typically belittle green activists for promoting less consumption, suddenly finding that they share the same values.

Thanks for the reflexive comments Actually, I haven't even commented on the activists at Columbia or their deportation. What you clearly don't understand is that the 1st Amendment doesn't exist merely to protect popular opinions and religions from government interference. Here's an opinion from the ACLU cited in regard to a case of a homophobic pastor and his flock who held a nasty, homophobic demonstration at the funeral of a man murdered because he was gay: "The First Amendment really was designed to protect a debate at the fringes. You don't need the courts to protect speech that everybody agrees with, because that speech will be tolerated. You need a First Amendment to protect speech that people regard as intolerable or outrageous or offensive — because that is when the majority will wield its power to censor or suppress, and we have a First Amendment to prevent the government from doing that. https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/protecting-outrageous-offensive-speech

Well, by the data I cited above, fox news had about 120 million unique visitors (what you and mikehunt are calling individuals) in January of 2025.

More blaming Biden for inflation. Most of the world suffer from high inflation in the wake of COVID. Is that Biden's fault too? A rational person would look for a common cause for worldwide inflation. As for the tech industry losing jobs, you ask the question but you didn't provide an answer. Have you got one with a legitimate source to back it up?

Whatever the world may think of America's religiosity, what's that got to do with the first Amendment? As for you, if you are, in fact, an American, you are a traitor to the legacy handed down to Americans by the founding fathers.

Well, there is this: "For the month, FOX News Digital secured 4.6 billion total multiplatform minutes (up 40% over January 2024), 2.2 billion total multiplatform views (up 30% over January 2024) and 121.8 million total digital multiplatform unique visitors (up 11% over January 2024).*" https://press.foxnews.com/2025/02/fox-news-digital-marks-its-third-highest-month-with-total-digital-multiplatform-unique-visitors-in-history-during-january#:~:text=For the month%2C FOX News,11% over January 2024). "A unique visitor is a term used in marketing analytics which refers to a person who has visited the website at least once and is counted only once in the reporting time period. So if the user visits the web more than once, it counts as one visitor only. It’s also called a “Unique User”. For example, if a user visits your web page and then browses further on 2 other pages and then leaves your website and returns again to see more pages, he is counted as a single individual user (“unique visitor”)" https://useinsider.com/glossary/unique-visitor/

America is not a Christian country. Religion is not supposed to enter into it. The founding fathers were quite clear about that. The were men of The Enlightenment and had seen the awful consequences in Europe of basing government on religion. Do you think the reason that God isn't mentioned in the Constitution was by accident? In fact, James Madison, known as the Father of the Constitution, actually considered employing chaplains for Congress and the military to be unconstitutional.

Funny you should say that "Tariffs were meant to be a threat to force people into these swap agreements — that’s [what’s in] the paper by Stephen Miran [Trump’s chair of the Council of Economic Advisers]. It’s kind of a “have your cake and eat it too” strategy — which Miran acknowledges. One of the things we’ve always said made the U.S. [dollar] the reserve currency, is the transactability, the liquidity, the transparency, the rule of law and markets. So, if you’re talking about essentially going in and forcing people into non-marketable, long-term debt agreements, how does that impact the rest of the market? Do interest rates go down or up with that? Do the people that are holding the marketable securities run away because you’re showing that the U.S. is no longer a transparent, trustworthy counterparty? It’s more like China, where you can step in at any moment and say, “You go into this agreement, or I’m going to clobber you with tariffs.” https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/03/31/wall-street-insider-explains-market-spooked-00258083

You sure about that? https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PAYEMS

Arguments supported by facts are inferior to just making thing up? Another comment from Oppositeworld.

And let’s not forget: In terms of the trade deficit, there’s a service surplus. What is the service surplus made of? Tourism, education, medical care. We export that stuff, and they’re directly attacking that. They’re directly attacking all of the sources of our service surplus. So, what, we’re going to give up medical research, professional consulting and financial services surplus so that we can make T-shirts in the U.S.? Is that going to be good for productivity and U.S. exceptionalism? Is that going to make people want to hold the dollar more or less? https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/03/31/wall-street-insider-explains-market-spooked-00258083

First off, you claim there wasn't the mountain of studies. Clearly your claim was false, right?

What's remarkable is that someone can blithely assert that there is no mountain of evidence without even bothering to look if that was the case. It took me at most 2 minutes to find this.

But a lot lower percentage of them died from it or suffered long term consequences.