RunawayFixer

NATO is such a big threat to Russia, that as soon as Finland had joined NATO, Russia moved it's troops away from that area. Russia's problem with NATO is not that it sees a defensive alliance like NATO as a threat, the problem for them is that they can't bully and invade NATO countries should they feel like it. Which is also why all the formerly occupied countries that are next to Russia, want to join NATO. Who doesn't want their country to be safe from invasion by a fascist state? Tankies apparently.

I see 3 possible reasons:
The continued existence of a free and democratic Europe could remind US citizens of what they once had and how much better they could be living, which makes the continued existence and success (fingers crossed) of the EU an existential threat to US conservatives.

Or maybe Putin + Xi consider the battle for the spite and minds of US Americans won and so they're now moving the focus of their troll armies + proxies to the EU. If all trolls suddenly get the same new talking points, that's not organic, that's a strategic shift mandated from the top.

And the 3rd reason I can think of is the combination of the above, which I think is most likely. And if the authoritarians fail at making the eu fail, they'll double down on displaying the eu countries as dystopian hellholes to convince their own population that they have it so much better.

I think that you didn't read the article before chosing to back Cruz.

Except that bloat is not what the republicans are targeting. From the article:
"However, it isn’t the infotainment bloatware, wireless key-fobs, power seats, or over-the-air subscription services they’re blasting, but safety systems that the NHTSA says have saved 860,000 lives since 1968."

As if USA republicans would ever consider taking away your mandatory infotainment system with opt-out ads, that's now what their donors are paying them for.

MTG is absolutely a grifter though, she only changed her narrative when she was on the way out already. She's also planned her retirement from congress to be 2 days after she is entitled to a lifetime congressional pension. She's a grifter who's old grift has run it's course and so now she's attempting to pivot to something new, grifters gonna grift.

Maybe that the government reactions don't engage with the anger, is what makes those reactions worthy of inclusion? Actually, scratch that, whether or not those reactions do or don't acknowledge the anger is irrelevant to whether or not they should be included. Those reactions are relevant to the article because they inform us of what the other involved parties are doing.

In this article those reactions at the end do not fit in with the main story of the angry people, because they don't acknowledge that anger. I'd call them tone-deaf reactions, but a journalist isn't allowed to write that (except in opinion pieces), so the journalist can only give those tone-deaf reactions as they were (+ provide some context about them, which I appreciated). That the anger of those people was so far only responded to with tone-deaf reactions, makes those tone-deaf reactions very relevant to the anger of the people.

Not unfocused at all imo. The article says that Hong Kong would traditionally hold an open inquiry in cases like this and then goes on to explain why that is probably not going to happen for this disaster (hint: authoritarians don't like open enquiries). And then at the end of the article there are some reactions from other more remotely involved parties + some context about those remarks. The end of an article is where those reactions are traditionally put and reactions from various parties are always going to be more varied in nature, but that doesn't make them non topical or "unfocused".

No coaches in Mar-a-lago? Is Vance not welcome there?

It used to be that the first result to a lot of queries, was a link to the relevant Wikipedia article. But that first result has now been replaced by an ai summary of the relevant Wikipedia article. If people don't need more info than that summary, they don't click through. That Ai summary is a layer of abstraction that wouldn't be able to exist without the source material that it's now making less viable to exist. Kinda like a parasite.

Would the outcome have been the same without people in the media repeatedly bringing this to everyone's attention? Probably not, because there would have been no public pressure against it, while the shadow groups that want this would have still been lobbying the politicians.

Something bad is going to happen.
Some people advocate to stop that bad thing.
Even more people are holding their clutches that the bad thing might happen.
Because of public pressure, action is undertaken to prevent the bad thing from happening.
Thanks to those efforts, the bad thing is successfully averted.

Some random person: that bad thing was never going to happen, look at all those gullible people who were panicking over nothing, we could have just done nothing and the outcome would have been the same.

Also known as the "preparedness paradox": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preparedness_paradox

I found a moment to look up that edible part that you found: "For the purposes of this part, ‘meat’ means edible parts of the animals referred to in points 1.2 to 1.8 of Annex I to Regulation (EC) No 853/2004, " So no, they do not define meat as the edible parts of the animals, they define meat as the edible parts of the animals referred to in points 1.2 to 1.8 of Annex I etc. You can't just ignore parts of a definition.

1.2 to 1.8 of Annex I to Regulation (EC) No 853/2004 is:

"Meat" means edible parts of the animals referred to in points 1.2 to 1.8, including blood.

1.2. "Domestic ungulates" means domestic bovine (including Bubalus and Bison species), porcine, ovine and caprine animals, and domestic solipeds.

1.3. "Poultry" means farmed birds, including birds that are not considered as domestic but which are farmed as domestic animals, with the exception of ratites.

1.4. "Lagomorphs" means rabbits, hares and rodents.

1.5. "Wild game" means:

—

wild ungulates and lagomorphs, as well as other land mammals that are hunted for human consumption and are considered to be wild game under the applicable law in the Member State concerned, including mammals living in enclosed territory under conditions of freedom similar to those of wild game; and

—

wild birds that are hunted for human consumption.

1.6. "Fanned game" means farmed ratites and farmed land mammals other than those referred to in point 1.2.

1.7. "Small wild game" means wild game birds and lagomorphs living freely in the wild.

1.8. "Large wild game" means wild land mammals living freely in the wild that do not fall within the definition of small wild game.

Afaik fish is not considered meat, definitely not in colloquial language. With a quick search I found another EU article which mentions meat and fish, and they list meat and fishery products as being different things: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/hygiene-rules-for-food-of-animal-origin.html

What that article includes under meat: "Meat, including domestic ungulates (bovine, porcine, ovine and caprine species); poultry and lagomorphs (farmed birds, rabbits, hares and rodents); farmed and wild game; minced meat, meat preparations and mechanically separated/recovered meat; and meat products."