The War on Bureaucracy

Plus: Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal, padlocked playgrounds, and more...

Bureaucracy cutting by the numbers: President Donald Trump and chief government auditor Elon Musk have set out to cut large chunks of the federal civilian workforce. So how are they doing?

Well, so far approximately 280 workers in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) roles have been axed. Some 9,000 employees have been affected by the dismantling of their agencies. About 75,000 workers have voluntarily signed up for the federal worker buyouts offered—so about 3 percent of the civilian workforce—per a spokesman for the Office of Personnel Management.

The unions that represent federal workers have warned would-be quitters that the buyout offers might not be trustworthy and have also started filing lawsuits against the administration—somewhat odd behavior given that the buyouts provide pay through September and the alternative might just be getting axed altogether. (U.S. District Judge George O'Toole ruled yesterday that the unions did not have standing to bring the suit, so the buyouts resumed following the lifting of the pause.)

Musk reports that $1 billion worth of Education Department contracts have been canceled, including $101 million worth of DEI-related grants. The Institute of Education Sciences, which conducts research on things like student achievement and school safety, has been obliterated. Sen. Patty Murray (D–Wash.), a former preschool teacher, said Musk was "taking a wrecking ball to high-quality research and basic data we need to improve our public schools. Cutting off these investments after the contract has already been inked is the definition of wasteful."

Three things come to mind amid the freakout. One: Spending $101 million dollars on DEI grants strikes me as the truly wasteful thing. Do American taxpayers actually want that? Did we ever vote on that? Did those grants make our school system better?

Two: The federal government has historically been quite bad at tracking data that Americans need access to. "At the end of the [2020-2021] school year, there was no consistent source with national data on how schools had operated during the school year," wrote economist and researcher Emily Oster back in 2022. "Many district were missing information completely about whether they were virtual, in person or hybrid; some had limited information for only part of the year. The data that was there was missing or inconsistent." Oster and her team decided to compile it themselves, as did the folks at data firm Burbio, for good reason: "The consequences of school closures will likely be felt for years, probably decades," wrote Oster. "If we want to understand the consequences of these disruptions, we need systematic information on where they occurred."

Third: Just because the data has been tracked doesn't mean school districts actually course correct. Consider the literacy crisis: on-grade-level reading has been in steep decline in the country—but it's gotten so bad in part because it's taken parents and teachers a while to wise up to issues with the "balanced literacy" curriculum model vs. phonics-based instruction. A whole generation of children has been harmed by this, and the crisis could've ostensibly been averted sooner had federal, state, and local governments had their acts together.

Anyway, now Trump is reportedly mulling dismantling the department altogether, which would require congressional approval. Expect more hysteria if that happens.

A sober big-picture take: "The same people who predicted Donald Trump would be a dictator now say a 'constitutional crisis' has already arrived, barely three weeks into his Presidency. They're overwrought as usual, and readers may appreciate a less apocalyptic breakdown about Mr. Trump's actions and whether they do or don't breach the normal checks and balances," writes The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. "Mr. Trump's domestic-policy decisions so far strike us as falling into three categories. Most rest on strong legal ground. Some are legally debatable and could go either way in court. In still others Mr. Trump appears to be breaking current law deliberately to tee up cases that will go to the Supreme Court to restore what he considers to be constitutional norms. None of these is a constitutional crisis." Full thing is worth a read.

Israel and Hamas back on track: Earlier in the week, it looked like the very fragile ceasefire between the Israeli government and terrorist group Hamas would not hold. Now, it's back on track: 800 trucks of humanitarian aid entered Gaza earlier today, and Hamas has reciprocated by assuring Israel it will follow through on its commitment to release more hostages.

Yesterday, Israel's defense minister warned that "all hell will break loose" on Hamas if they failed to follow through on the terms of the ceasefire deal. On Monday, President Donald Trump used similar threats, offering a Saturday deadline, to apply pressure on Hamas.

"Israel and Hamas agreed to a phased deal with the first phase consisting of a 42-day cease-fire and Hamas' release of 33 Israeli hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners," reports The Wall Street Journal. "The second phase of the deal would see a complete end to the war and the release of the remaining living hostages. Negotiations for the second phase were supposed to begin about two weeks in but haven't begun. The first phase ends on March 1."

"Hamas spokesperson Hazem Kassem rejected 'the language of U.S. and Israeli threats' and called on Israel to implement the terms of the ceasefire deal," reports the Associated Press. "Among other claims, Hamas says Israel is not allowing an agreed-upon number of tents, prefabricated homes and heavy machinery into Gaza." He can reject them all he wants, but they appear to have worked.

---

Scenes from New York: Ah, my illustrious city, padlocking playgrounds so 2-year-olds can't play on them.

Why is this goddamn city so obsessed with padlocking playgrounds pic.twitter.com/rOSMl41Msh

— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) February 12, 2025

---

QUICK HITS

• Following Elon Musk's comments earlier in the week about DOGE being maximally transparent, he has started populating its website with updates on what they've cut so far.

DOGE website is live! https://t.co/0ozFC0dYYD

Initial site:
1. X feed posts
2. Consolidated government org chart - enormous manual effort consolidating 16,000+ offices
3. Summary of the massive regulatory state, including the Unconstitutionality Index (ratio of rules written…

— Department of Government Efficiency (@DOGE) February 13, 2025

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. looks set to be confirmed today as secretary of Health and Human Services. But why has there been so little organized opposition from Big Pharma? asks Politico. "'They think he's the wrong person for the job,' said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, one of the few groups to openly decry Kennedy's bid to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. 'With good respect to all my buddies, they're making the false assumption that if they stay silent, they will get something in return.'"
• "Eight of the federal agency watchdogs abruptly fired by President Trump last month filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging their terminations," reports Axios. "The plaintiffs argued that their terminations violated federal statutes meant to protect them from interference in carrying out their 'critical, non-partisan oversight duties.'" The plaintiffs include inspectors general of the Departments of Defense, Labor, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, Education, State, and Agriculture, as well as the Small Business Administration.
• Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D–Hawaii) was just confirmed and sworn in as director of national intelligence.
• The longtime president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., Deborah Rutter, was recently fired from her post by an all-new board, mostly appointed by President Donald Trump. (Historically the board has stayed fairly bipartisan.) Now a new chair of the Kennedy Center has assumed power: The Donald himself. "It is a Great Honor to be Chairman of The Kennedy Center, especially with this amazing Board of Trustees. We will make The Kennedy Center a very special and exciting place!" celebrated Trump online. All of this is weird and monarchical, but perhaps the weirdest thing about it is that the Kennedy Center is funded via taxpayer dollars.
• What are the point of Trump's tariffs, exactly?

• Stop this nonsense right now!

???? The House budget would allow about $4 trillion more debt through 2034, with interest. ????

That makes our debt problem about 50% worse. https://t.co/5NzsSTinjz

— Marc Goldwein (@MarcGoldwein) February 12, 2025

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

Bureaucracy cutting by the numbers...

I'll wait for Bureaucracy Wars II: The Judiciary Strikes Back

[Spiritus Mundi]

WhO eLeCtEd ThE JuDiCiArY!?

[Medulla Oblongata]

Besides all the judges trying to squash Trump orders on virtually no basis (like a judge trying to say what the executive must or must not include on a website?), it seems judges in the UK are increasingly dictatorial and arbitrarily ignoring law and government policies.

I've no doubt this is a "Coming soon to a theater near you..." situation.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/02/12/judges-have-taken-control-of-britains-borders/

The upshot is a growing divergence between policy and public opinion. Immigration tribunals seem to revel in rejecting common sense. This week, we learned of an Albanian criminal whose deportation was blocked on the grounds that his son doesn’t like ‘foreign’ chicken nuggets. A Jamaican drug dealer who beat his ex-partner in front of his children must also stay in Britain, a court recently ruled, because his daughter is questioning her gender. A Congolese man who sexually abused his own stepdaughter and her cousins, and is still considered a risk, has been allowed to stay in the UK thanks to his all-important ‘right to a family life’.

Few cases better illustrate this yawning democratic deficit than a judge’s recent decision to allow a Gazan family to resettle in the UK via a scheme that was intended for Ukrainian refugees. As the Telegraph reports this week, the family of six applied for resettlement last year, but their claim was refused by a lower-tier immigration tribunal, which ruled that it should be up to parliament to decide who should benefit from the UK’s resettlement schemes (recent country-specific schemes have also covered Afghanistan, Hong Kong and Syria). This ruling was then overturned by upper-tribunal judge Hugo Norton-Taylor. His judgment, published at the end of January, cites the European Convention on Human Rights and, specifically, the Article 8 ‘right to a family life’. (The Gazan family at the centre of the case have a brother in the UK who they have had no face-to-face contact with for 17 years.)

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

"The upshot is a growing divergence between policy and public opinion."

As if the public deserves a say in "democracy".

[Juliana Frink]

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Sure, behind every powerful woman is typically a man providing her top cover for her stupidity. Just look at Victoria Nuland or Kathleen Kennedy.

[Juliana Frink]

and Samantha Power:

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00ZLWZD22/reasonmagazinea-20/.sym.bc3ba8d1-5076-4ab7-9ba8-a5c6211e002d&pf_rd_p=bc3ba8d1-5076-4ab7-9ba8-a5c6211e002d&pf_rd_r=134-4785875-4902012&pd_rd_wg=SFooQ&pd_rd_r=c7c70f25-6795-44a1-9811-3a559f022d74&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

This kind of pathological Third World worship is a huge reason why the US needs to start divesting itself from Europe generally, up to and including sanctions for human rights abuses and cutting off diplomatic relations if necessary. I'd rather be Europe's full-blown enemy than allow our tax dollars to enable the rad-left open borders technocratic dystopia they envision.

[Eeyore]

Sactions against the UK until they stop putting people in prison for Facebook posts.

[Marshal]

You have to put someone in the prisons. If you can't put child sexual abusers there I guess Facebookers are the next best group.

[Bananas]

He only jerked off on her!
Sorry, this never gets old.

[Medulla Oblongata]

He said he was sorry!

[Fist of Etiquette]

For the record, I also claim to be the origin of Bureaucracy Wars III: Return of the Legislative.

They'll probably ruin it with Ewokes, though.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Applause

[Rev Arthur L kuckland (5-30-24 banana republic day)]

I have good news, all the ewoks are dead

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

"They'll probably ruin it with Ewokes, though."

In 21st century Hollywood? More like overtly diverse and militant gender (and species) fluid heroes who spend most of their time spouting virtuous one-liners. And the villains will be very white, very male, and very mean (see Dune II).

[Rev Arthur L kuckland (5-30-24 banana republic day)]

I thought it was beurocracy wars 2: unelected boogaloo

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Rogan did a 3.5 hour podcast with Mike Benz the other day, mainly going over the stuff with USAID but also talking tangentially how this whole funding mechanism is related to other offices like DARPA, as well as a pretty thorough discussion about how this was all set up in the wake of World War II as a political warfare front. USAID itself might have been only formally set up by JFK in the early 60s, but the operations that it's done have really gone on since the late 40s.

What USAID did was provide a humanitarian face that it could use as a shield to deflect attention on the gayops it was ultimately pulling, mostly for the benefit of American economic interests since ALL alliances are ultimately transactional in nature, but political ones, too. During the Cold War, it was to battle global communism; afterwards it was gradually taken over by neoliberal syndicalists and then weaponized against the regime's domestic critics during the Obama administration with the passage of the Federal Information Security Modernization Act.

USAID basically served as a quasi-autonomous slush fund/piggy bank for the State Department and the CIA in particular to fund a bunch of "independent" global media ops dedicated to ensuring foreign leaders worked for US interests. The $9 million Reuters got via DARPA for 'Active Social Engineering Defense (ASED) Large Scale Social Deception (LSD)" that Trump's freaking out about today is one of those types of programs.

If it seemed during the 2015-2024 period that a lot of news orgs were basically saying the same thing (for example, the lockstep narratives during COVID such as the lab leak or mask efficacy), that was absolutely deliberate, as it was all coordinated via USAID and the glowies through their web of NGOs. There's a reason that Irish banshee Samantha Power's name keeps popping up time after time in these organizations, and it's because she's been rising in the ranks from a mouthpiece to the chief architect of a lot of this global media and regime manipulation, ever since she was a reporter in Bosnia. Katherine Maher appears to be getting groomed for similar responsibilities (tied to the Atlantic Council and WEF, and in charge of Wikipedia and NPR when both really went off the rails as explicitly left-wing media organs) , so don't be surprised to see her get appointed to a USAID zombie in the government when a Democratic president is back in charge at some point.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

For once Rogan was mostly listening. Imagine if Musk drafted Benz for DOGE.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

The one criticism I have of Benz is that he'll get sidetracked by asides. There were several instances in the podcast that he was about to drop some juicy stuff, only to go off on tangents that prevented him from sticking to the main point. He probably thinks it's providing necessary context, but he needs to save that for after he's gotten through the good stuff first, especially when Rogan is mostly being attentive and not interjecting his own semi-related bits.

[Juliana Frink]

"There's a reason that Irish banshee Samantha Power's name keeps popping up time after time in these organizations, and it's because she's been rising in the ranks from a mouthpiece to the chief architect of a lot of this global media and regime manipulation..."

I'm sure she's gotten a lot of help from her hubby:
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00ZLWZD22/reasonmagazinea-20/.sym.bc3ba8d1-5076-4ab7-9ba8-a5c6211e002d&pf_rd_p=bc3ba8d1-5076-4ab7-9ba8-a5c6211e002d&pf_rd_r=134-4785875-4902012&pd_rd_wg=SFooQ&pd_rd_r=c7c70f25-6795-44a1-9811-3a559f022d74&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk

[Quo Usque Tandem]

I listened to that too; good summary.

My concern about these revelations is that the grift and corruption is so complex and intertwined that it needs to be presented in a coherent manner [Benz may have a good understanding, but not so good at communicating it]; otherwise they are going to lose their listeners. Could this be packaged as a Teapot Dome scandal?

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Teapot Dome could be centered on a single person. USAID has been doing this for literal decades, so it's not as easily pigeonholed. Even Power's tenure was more along the lines of putting a known apparatchik in the seat to formally manage the programs.

[Medulla Oblongata]

According to the congressional committee's findings, USAID spent:

$11.75 million on measuring the effectiveness of DEI promotion efforts in Nepal (Award ID #AID367C1500001);
$750,000 on Princeton University's DEI survey in the Middle East (Award ID #7200AA21C00087);
$859,000 on hiring a DEI specialist at USAID's headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Award ID #720BHA23S00034);
$23,000 on hosting DEI recruitment seminars in San Martin, Iquitos, and Lima, Peru (Award ID #72052723P00066);
$558,000 on "emergency" DEI support (Award ID #7200AA22C00075);
$1 million on hiring an LGBT advisor for USAID's U.S. Personal Services Contractor program (Award ID #7200AA22S00012);
$15,500 on a DEI staff retreat in Nigeria (Award ID #72062023P00088);
$100,000 to conduct a DEI survey in Ghana (Award ID #72062423C00002);
$50,000 on the establishment of a DEI fellowship in Uzbekistan (Award ID #72012224P00001);
$30,280 on "DEIA-facilitated conversations" in Senegal (Award IDs #72068523F50009, #72068520A00009);
$23,300 on purchasing promotional materials for an upcoming DEI retreat (Award ID #720RFS22PC00011).

Among other expenses, USAID used:

$5.5 million to "improve the lives of LGBT individuals" in Uganda (Award ID #72061724CA00004);
$37.67 million for providing "services" to prostitutes, their clients, and "transgender"-identifying people (Award ID #72067418CA00027);
$65.7 million on vasectomies in the Congo (Award ID #7200AA20CA00011);
$6 million on the "social inclusion of LGBTQ+ people" in countries around the world (Award ID #7200AA22CA00008);
$4.3 million to provide "services" for men who have sex with other men in South Africa (Award ID #72067423FA00008);
$14.9 million to "enhance the leadership" of LGBT leaders in Cambodia (Award ID #72044223C00001);
$3.5 million for "empowering LGBT Colombians" to take part in the political process (Award ID #72051423IO00002);
$1.3 million to "create a comfortable environment for LGBTQ people" in North Macedonia (Award ID #72016524FA00001)
$3,9. million to "strengthen equality and democracy" for the LGBTQ+ population in the Western Balkans (Award ID #7200AA24CA00023);
$18,800 to help LGBT individuals vote in the 2021 Honduras elections (Award ID #72052221P00044);
$108,700 on "strategic approaches" for advancing LGBT rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Award IDs #72016818F00001, #AID168I1500001);
$1.1 million on "empower[ing]" the LGBT community in Armenia (Award ID #72011119CA00002);
$595,000 to "empower" Uganda's LGBT community to "push back against anti-LGBT legislation" (Award ID #72061723FA00001).

[Medulla Oblongata]

USAID also funded circumcisions across the globe through a flurry of projects (Award IDs #72061723F50035, #72061724F50003, #72067320CA00001, #72065620CA00001, #72061220CA00003, #AID674A1500001, #AID674A001100005, #72061220CA00001, #72065623CA00003, #AID617E1200004, #AID617E1200003, #AID617E1200002, #AID674Q1300002, #72061723F00005, #72061721D00003, #72067419F00003, #AID674C1200004, #72067418N00001, #72067421C00001, #72062120F00002, #72067418F00005, #72061218F00001, #AIDOAAI1400039, #72067418F00008, #72067418F00012, #AID617BC1200001, #AID617BC1300004, #AID617BC1300001, #AID617BC1200002, #72061723F50006, #72061723F50032, #72061723F50004, #72061723F50005, #72061723F50002, #72061721F50001, #72061722F50018, #72061723F50034, #72061724F50002, #72061723F50031, #72061723F50033, #72061723F50003, #72061723F50007, #72061723F50015, #72061723.F50030, #72062120F00001, #72061719F50001, #72061723F50036, #AID617BC1500003, #AID617E1400001, #72061723F50016, #72062120D00001, #AID674H1700002, #AID674A1500002, #72061721F50010, #72061722F50008, #72061720F50008, #72061719F50020, #72061722F50021, #72061719F50017, #AID617BC1500002, #AID617E1400002, #72061722F50020, #72061722F50019, #72061720F50006, #72061720F50015, #72061721F50004, #72061721F50003, #72061722F50028, #72061723F50014, #72061721F50006, #72061719F50022, #AID674A1500005, #AID612LA1300001, #72061720FA00001, #AID617BC1300015).

[Chipper Chunked Chile Con Congress (ex NCW)]

Yeah, I bet they funded a number of... let's call them, "complete circumcisions", as well.

[Medulla Oblongata]

Via press release, majority member Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) revealed that since 2022, USAID made payments to an organization led by an anti-Israel rapper who has written, produced, and performed several antisemitic songs, in which he called Israelis "cannibals" and "animals" as well as compared Gaza to Auschwitz. According to LinkedIn, American-born rapper Raffoul Saadeh is the executive director of a Palestinian NGO called Tomorrow's Youth Organization, which received $3.3 million in funds from USAID for a Middle East Partnership for Peace Act (MEPPA)-affiliated program that trains female entrepreneurs, per grant records.

Lawler, citing three of his songs ("Scars of Gaza," "From the Ghetto," and "Tears over Palestine"), said Saadeh "advocates for Jew hatred in his music." Saadeh's song "Scars of Gaza" contained the lyrics: "Auschwitz reincarnated brought back to life by the victims who were burned by the Nazis." A music video of that song on Saadeh's now-deleted Facebook page ended with a call for violence. In "Tears over Palestine," Saadeh rapped: "Imagine Arabic Anne Frank writing her journal / Imagine Arab babies getting tossed in infernos / The Holocaust of Palestine / What a vicious circle."

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/miacathell/2025/02/13/usaid-congressional-hearing-n2652163

"[W]e need to get to the bottom of why the Biden administration was funding Jew hatred," Lawler urged.

Even Joe SCarborough agreed...

Townhall.com
@townhallcom
CHANGE OF HEART?

Joe Scarborough seems to acknowledge the absurdity of USAID grants — the likes of which funded "$3,000,000 to a rap artist in Gaga producing anti-Israel, anti-Semitic songs."

"There are programs...that are not the sort of program that most Americans would support..."

[Medulla Oblongata]

As previously reported, USAID also doled out massive sums of foreign funding for Sesame Street programming in the Middle East, including:

$20 million to create a Sesame Street program in Iraq (Award ID #72026721CA00001);
$4.1 million to establish a Sesame Street program in Bangladesh (Award ID #72038818C00001);
$5,2 million to start a Nigerian Sesame Street pilot program (Award ID #AID620A000800036);
$3.9 million to teach "essential life skills" through Bangladeshi Muppets (Award ID #AID388A1300005);
$100,000 on Sesame Street Japanese dubbing a.k.a. translated voiceovers (Award ID #SJA80018GR0056);
$300,000 on a second season of Sesame Street in Kenya (Award ID #SKE50021GR3082).
The investigative body additionally identified other questionable USAID expenditures:

$4.5 million to teach individuals in Kazakhstan "how to fight back against internet trolls" (Award ID #72011523CA00001);
$200,000 on a Lebanese organization addressing vaccine misinformation with "an inoculation chatbot" in Uzbekistan (Award ID #7200AA22FA00028);
$31.5 million to help USAID employees with counseling, "organizational resilience," wellness, and work-life balance (Award ID #AIDOAAC1700092);
$22 million to increase tourism in Tunisia and Egypt (Award IDs #SMO55520GR0009, #72026320CA00006, #72026320C00005);
$29 million to diversify crop agriculture in Georgia (Award ID #72011424C00002);
$850,000 on a so-called "transgender job fair" in Bangladesh (Award ID #72038818FA00001);
$12,000 for pushing abortion as a method of family planning in Africa (Award IDs #72067418P00016, #72062118P00018);
$715,000 on "digital solutions for access to labor justice" in Mexico (Award ID #7200AA21FA00047).

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

It's important to keep in mind here that, while this is absolutely a form of graft and money laundering for various political activists, its true purpose is to insert American-tied NGOs in these countries that the CIA can then use, via USAID, to foment riots and upheavals while astroturfing "independent" media reporting to boost their signal if the leaders of those countries don't want to play ball with the US.

They've been running this playbook since the end of World War II, and really ramped it up when they had such strategic success with bringing down the Warsaw Pact with it. And it's in everything from mass media to pop culture to sports to pretty much everything else.

The reason so many people are freaking out about it is that it's now being officially exposed. Previously, it was only discussed on "conspiratorial" sites like InfoWars or Revolver, or even on more niche lefty sites like Counterpunch. Orgs like The Guardian have actually nibbled around the edges of it, but it's never been fully laid out like it has been here.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

How badly are democrats spiraling? They are back to doing this:

Congressman Gabe Evans

@repgabeevans
Us: Let's lead the way and bring jobs back to America

Democrats: "Manufacturing" is a sexist term against women!

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

The Dems are stuck on stupid.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Cause or effect?

[Super Scary]

It's more a "which came first, the chicken or the egg" situation.

[Bananas]

They don't even list egg prices anymore at my supermarket. I didn't know the price yesterday until I paid for them.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

Their support was all a NGO funded illusion, and now with the money spigots turned off they're standing alone in an empty parking lot with no direction.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Some of us conspiracy theorists have been ppinting this out for years. Did facts change?

[damikesc]

It is nice seeing Politico stating that conspiracy theorists like us were also correct on the state of the economy last year.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

You do know the 21st century definition of "conspiracy", right? A claim for some organized deception that Democrats and media loudly deny but later admit was largely true.

[Jefferson Paul]

Has anyone linked the USAID NGO de facto money laundering to Act Blue money laundering, where they take in a sizeable "donation" but report it as hundreds or thousands of small donations from random people?

I wouldn't be surprised if USAID gave money to one or several NGOs that routed the money through a bunch of other NGOs, eventually making its way to Act Blue. And Act Blue, not wanting to make it obvious where the money came from, claimed John Billings made 2000 $15 donations in 2024, Sally Smith made 4000 $20 donations over a 10-month period, etc.

[Marshal]

Left wingers are economic illiterates who believe production is beneath their stature. So language police it is.

[Medulla Oblongata]

The ratio starts here....

https://twitchy.com/grateful-calvin/2025/02/13/jan-schakowski-manufacturing-is-a-sexist-term-against-women-n2408249

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

Schakowsky is a retard indicative of the typical caliber of Illinois politicians these days, especially Democrats who don’t have to face opposition during primaries and elections.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Let's call that the Swalwell effect.

[Chipper Chunked Chile Con Congress (ex NCW)]

Holy gods. Parody is absolutely dead.

[Incunabulum]

Is the DNC supposed to be the stupid party or the evil one?

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

Yes.

[Mike Parsons]

Reminds me of "Amen, and Awomen"

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

"Democrats: "Manufacturing" is a sexist term against women!"

OK, womynufacturing? Personufacturing? Making shit instead of sitting around gossiping about each other?

[mad.casual]

Democrats: "Manufacturing" is a sexist term against women!

LOL. Lemme guess, manning up and taking responsibility for your own actions is sexist against women too, right? Math? Self-awareness? Humor? All sexist against women also, right?

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Some of that is clearly white supremacy. Maybe even "color blind white supremacy," the worst kind.

[Jefferson Paul]

I don't know the origin of the word "manufacturing," but as far as the etymology of "man" it comes from the Old English word "mann," which was a word to refer to a human, with no designation for male. "Wer" was the word for an adult male. It's why we have the word "werewolf" which is a male-human and wolf combination. So anytime you see a feminist complain about the word "woman" having "man" in it, or, worse, spelling it "womyn" or "womxn," it's just betraying the feminist's lack of understanding about the word's origin. In Old English the prefix "wif" meant female and "mann" meant human, so it translates to female person. The "man" meant person, not male.

[mad.casual]

The "man" meant person, not male.

Maybe not the full etymology, but this part was generally understood up until the late 90s. Even today, large numbers of women (and men) completely understand it, that, e.g., 'Chairman' doesn't mean "bepenised Chairperson" any more than it means "bepenised person who is a chair", but still otherwise tolerate the insults to their intelligence or engage in the stupidity.

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

Manufacturing comes out of Latin and Middle French with “manu” (Latin - hand) and “facture” (M. French - making).

[Mike Parsons]

Just a basic latin breakdown.

Manu - hand. Factura - some sort of creation, work, product, something made

The fact that we have boiled down politics to such a base base retard level that we have faux feminists who are arguing for Lea Thomas to slap his schlong around in the women's locker room before dominating them in the pool, while at the same time insinuating that 'manufacture' is problematic because it starts with the letters MAN....I mean we really are ruled by retarded children. 5th graders would have deeper, more mature, and likely more correct insights than this.

[soldiermedic76]

I hate to break it to the woke hive mind but humans aren't even the only species where the male noun is the same as the species name (mankind and man). The male noun for dogs is dog, for example. Nothing sexist about it. Nothing patriarchal. Etc. It's how the fucking language has worked back to when some Germanic tribes hanging out in northern Germany and the Danish Peninsula thought it might be a good idea to move to a better neighborhood, now that those pesky Romans have left.

[Stuck in California]

It's not a gendered word though.

Manu is from proto-european-indian roots, man, it means "hand". Latin Manus means hand strength. It shows up everywhere in English. Like in Manipulate, Manicure, Manuscript, um... emancipate, mandate, maneuver. I can't think of more but there are hundreds.

Facere in latin is to do or to bring about. Root of words like Facilitate, faculty, faction.

A manufactory would a place where hands bring about something. Now shortened to factory. Manufacture is hands bringing something about. Now it just means making stuff.

[soldiermedic76]

And dog really isn't a gendered word it's just used to also for the male gender. Man wasn't a gendered word but came to also be used for the male gender. As you describe the word man predates it use to describe the male gender.

[Stuck in California]

English gave up on gendered grammar all the way back into middle English. A century or two before Shakespeare. I don't know why, Germanic languages are gendered, so it's weird. Especially since Saxons and Normans who invaded used gendered nouns like modern Romance languages.

I kind of want to know now, but I'm not going to search right now, I bet it's a couple hour black hole and the word "Gender" probably makes the wackypedia completely suspect as a resource.

[EISTAU Gree-Vance]

“Now it just means making stuff.”

Like sammiches? The ladies should be recognized for this.

Femwiches? I dunno, my hearts in the right place here. Equity and all that…,

[Stuck in California]

Sandwich already plays to the females who should be making them. I mean, it has "Witch" right in the word there.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Well, so far approximately 280 workers in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) roles have been axed.

The unemployment lines are going to be extremely diverse, with all creeds and color of over-educated yet useless women.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Don't you even care about their starving cats???

[Vernon Depner]

Give them to the Haitians.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

That sounds AWFL.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

"...all creeds and color of over-educated yet useless women."

Check out the biologist over here.

[soldiermedic76]

Though based on the makeup of DIE experts, mostly white (almost predominantly white in fact).

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Judge rules that Pullitzers statement refusing to rescind awards for false Russiagate reporting is indeed actionable as defamation.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-scores-unequivocal-victory-against-pulitzer-prize-board-members-court-denies-request-dismiss-suit?intcmp=tw_fnc

[damikesc]

So.
Much.
Winning.

Do not even care if Trump wins. I just want the discovery.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

I just want more heads to explode.

[mad.casual]

So.
Much.
Winning.

Like buying a ticket to an event and then discovering that your ticket stub gets you free food and/or merch.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Perks and premiums all the way; haven't been this thrilled since I found the little toy submarine in my cereal box.

[Juliana Frink]

For me it was the little shark with the wind-up propeller tail powered by a tiny rubber band.

[Chipper Chunked Chile Con Congress (ex NCW)]

This is past "free food and merch" and into "free high-dollar escorts".

[soldiermedic76]

I already know what Jakey's headline is going to be this afternoon, now.

[soldiermedic76]

Also, at this rate, Trump is going to have the biggest, bestest, most beautiful Presidential library ever. All funded by the leftwing media that hates him.

[Fist of Etiquette]

...odd behavior given that the buyouts provide pay through September and the alternative might just be getting axed altogether.

Unions not working to the individual benefit of its members?

[soldiermedic76]

Gasp, I can't believe that would ever happen!

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

ACLU highlights the 4th coequal branch.

Casey Mattox
@CaseyMattox_
ACLU: "Not only would such mass layoffs violate federal law, but this action would undermine the important and historic check that the career civil service has had on curbing abuses by the executive branch."

https://thehill.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/02/ACLU-ACLU-DC-Potential-Mass-Layoffs-of-Government-Employees.pdf

[Don't look at me! (No longer muted!)]

career civil service has had on curbing abuses by the executive branc

So the deep state is a real thing after all.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Not only real, but a good thing! Sarc also agrees.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Yeah, that's a rather notable admission of how they see themselves.

[Ra's al Gore]

Democracy = you put your ballot in an unattended drop box then the govt does whatever the hell it wants to

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

WEF approves.

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

You will own nothing, not even your vote nor your government.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Shut up and eat your bugs [and be grateful for them peon]!

[Gaear Grimsrud]

Wow they've gone full Jacob Sullum.

[Michael Ejercito]

Why wpuld the ACLU think that avout the service?

[soldiermedic76]

If I were the judge (and fortunately for them I am not) I would have asked which section of the Constitution covers the bureaucratic branch and makes it co-equal to the other three branches.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Cutting off these investments after the contract has already been inked is the definition of wasteful.

The government dictionary.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Pennsylvania admits that the printed names of candidates on cast ballots doesn't match what is in the bar code. Tells voters to learn to read bar code

https://thefederalist.com/2025/02/12/pennsylvanias-message-to-voters-after-ballot-receipts-flipped-candidates-learn-to-read-barcodes/

[Don't look at me! (No longer muted!)]

Learn to code!

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Ahem. Learn to read bar code.

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

What do I look like, a fucking checkout scanner?

[Rev Arthur L kuckland (5-30-24 banana republic day)]

I'm willing to bet of all the commenters, eighter sqrsly or soldiermedic has learned the bar code.
Sqrlsy because he thinks the barcode is a secret way for the aliens to communicate with him
Soldiermedic because he gets lasered focused on some topic, and then learns a ton about it

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

Sarcasmic has learned the bar code as well. Too well.

[Chupacabra]

I doubt he can afford to go to bars. Mad Dog 20/20 in a paper bag sounds more appropriate.

[soldiermedic76]

I have eclectic taste but not that eclectic.

[soldiermedic76]

Also, I tend to be very ADHD. This week I am learning about the Battle of Loo during the first world war. Last week it was the Peninsula War. The week before that the Napoleonic Wars in general. Next week, I think I am going to read a history of the evolution of man. Or not. Depends on what catches my fancy when I'm done reading about Loo (so far typical British early war balls up operation).

[Chipper Chunked Chile Con Congress (ex NCW)]

*ahem*

I'm going to go ahead and claim that "honor". Admittedly, I can't do it now because A.) It's been 30 years and B.) My eyes just aren't that good any longer. But yes, I was once that level of turbo geek, who would do such a thing, just to be able to one-up my equally geeky friends. Much like being able to whistle a 1200 baud modem connection, or dial pulse a telephone by hand. Yeah, I'll grant that I wasted an absolute fuck-ton of time in my youth on pursuits that might well have been far more productive.

And yeah, I only bothered with UPC-A, not Code 128. Even I had some standards.

[Don't look at me! (No longer muted!)]

It was supposed to say “learn the code”.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Ahh. Makes more sense. Agree then.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

What are the odds that the errors only went one way?

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

(D)uh.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Spending $101 million dollars on DEI grants strikes me as the truly wasteful thing. Do American taxpayers actually want that?

We love getting pitted against each other and footing the bill.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

Not to mention hiring the incompetent.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

House passed a bill last week banning president's from banning oil and gas drilling.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2025/02/house-passes-bill-blocking-presidents-from-banning-oil-gas-drilling/

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

Buttplug hardest hit.

[Medulla Oblongata]

Reigning in executive authority!

[Ra's al Gore]

Remember this when the usual suspects complain about oxygen not being given to Thai grannies in Myramar.

Renowned Neurosurgeon on Assisted Dying and His 'Suicide Kit'
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/879187

Renowned British neurosurgeon Henry Marsh, CBE, FRCS, is back in the news with the publishing of his second volume of memoirs, in which he reminisces on 40 years of resecting brain tumors, as well as performing other complex neurosurgery procedures.

..."They argue that grannies will be made to commit suicide," he said. "Even if a few grannies get bullied into it, isn't that the price worth praying for all the people who could die with dignity

[Ra's al Gore]

Sixteen can be old enough to choose assisted dying, MSP says
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/sixteen-can-be-old-enough-to-choose-assisted-dying-msp-says-wvmmv06wh

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Can't let them get in the way of mass migration. They don't even have food trucks.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Well, if they are old enough to murder their genitals they are old enough to murder themselves. (And one seems to lead to the other.)

[Medulla Oblongata]

Thailand has universal healthcare. Why didn't they provide oxygen?

[Ra's al Gore]

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6560367/
Thailand’s policy on universal health coverage (UHC) has made good progress since its inception in 2002. Every Thai citizen is now entitled to essential preventive, curative and palliative health services at all life stages.

[Incunabulum]

Remember - you are entitled to it.

The government, of course, has no obligation to provide it.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Do you think oxygen grows on trees?

[Jefferson Paul]

I see what you did there

[damikesc]

Shouldn't Marsh live by his standards and, you know, put a gun in his own mouth?

[Ra's al Gore]

32-year-old blogger’s research forces Harvard Medical School affiliate to retract 6 papers, correct another 31
https://fortune.com/europe/2024/01/29/harvard-medical-school-affiliate-retracts-corrects-research-dana-farber-welsh-blogger/

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Trust the experts - Jeff.

[Medulla Oblongata]

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03974-8

More than 10,000 research papers were retracted in 2023 — a new record

The number of articles being retracted rose sharply this year. Integrity experts say that this is only the tip of the iceberg.

[damikesc]

Shocking that leftists have managed to use political pull to utterly bastardize the peer review process to the point of sheer irrelevancy.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Icebergs? On our burning planet?

[mad.casual]

"Integrity experts agree that retraction of 10,000 papers is actually more analogous to the manipulation of 10,000 thermometers in the overall scheme of climate change."

[Quo Usque Tandem]

I for one won't be truly happy until the phrase "studies show" is in the same despicable category as saying "The Jews."

[Vernon Depner]

Studies show the Jews _________________.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Consider the literacy crisis: on-grade-level reading has been in steep decline in the country...

AND MUSK WANTS TO CUT FUNDING??? How is the next generation ever going to know how to read pronouns at a college level?

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Funding for new gender discovery is going to set us back decades. China is sure to surge ahead in gender science.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Yeah, but most of those new genders in China will run on coal.

[Incunabulum]

If the DOE is abolished who will teach my kids about butt sex and call them racist?

[mad.casual]

SPBP2. For "free".

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

And Jeffy and Tony?

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Noted Tony [aka Molly Godiva, Raspberry Dinners, and no doubt other socks] showed back up last week. Must have fallen off the wagon of his abuse fetish recovery.

[Vernon Depner]

The most common place for kids to find out about butt sex has always been their home.

[Ra's al Gore]

https://encompass-europe.com/comment/a-democracy-shield-for-europe

In one of the most striking campaign pledges so far, Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has announced that she will create a European Democracy Shield if she is re-appointed after the EU elections in June. Her proposal reflects a deepening fear that external interference is destabilizing European democracy. Von der Leyen indicates that she will attach absolute priority to protecting democracy in her second term.

The Democracy Shield proposal is to enhance EU capabilities to combat the disinformation and malign online manipulation waged by foreign powers in Europe. It promises to combine existing measures under the Digital Services Act with new provisions related to AI. It builds on the EU’s so-called Defence of Democracy Package agreed in December 2023, promising to extend its measures against external interference. Responding to the Commission President’s new initiative, the Weimar Triangle states of France, Germany and Poland have also pushed to strengthen measures against malign foreign interference even further.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

"We're going to censor the fuck out of millions for 'our democracy' again."

[Rev Arthur L kuckland (5-30-24 banana republic day)]

Quick reminder, Europeans don't get to vote in eu elections, only eu beurocrats do

[Incunabulum]

Its worse than that.

Europeans vote for a party. That party chooses its candidates and what districts they will run in. Then the party chooses the PM. The PM appoints the MEP. The MEPs vote for the EU PM and for legislation as the EU dictates. EU elections are decided before the election is held. No uncertainty that way.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

The first part sounds like an electoral college for congress.

[Medulla Oblongata]

Fortification!

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

You know who else used a shield to protect Europe?

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

Charles Martel?

[A Thinking Mind]

He used a hammer.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Captain Europa?

[soldiermedic76]

Napoleon?

[soldiermedic76]

Dirk Pitts? Oh sorry that was a shield for the USA.

[Vernon Depner]

Agamemnon?

[mad.casual]

foreign powers in Europe

Gotta keep the uppity African Americans out.

[Ra's al Gore]

[VIDEO] Phantom Aid: Money allocated to countries that ends up funding INGOs
https://depts.washington.edu/globalhealthjustice/what-is-the-problem-with-international-aid/

International NGOs are expensive. They are usually run from their headquarters in expensive cities in high income countries like Washington DC, New York, Boston or Seattle, where the costs are very high compared to low-income countries. They charge overhead and indirect costs for their offices and overall organizational administration which are not related to the specific grant or contract. And the overhead can be more than half the entire project budget with an average of about 15-30% of these total budgets. The INGO offices are often quite expensive, and the administrative staff typically earn high salaries for the overall management of the NGO.

In addition to the overhead, the NGOs have substantial headquarter staff who provide either technical or financial management support just for the specific project. They are also highly paid and take additional funds from the project budget. They supervise the extensive and stringent programmatic and financial reporting requirements from the donors. These staff consume another 15-30% of the total grant substantially allocated to be given to low and middle-income countries. So, overall, between 30-60% of the total budget of many global health aid projects never even leave the headquarters of the INGO.

[Ra's al Gore]

They are stealing from Thai grannies, not me just because I want spending cuts.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Like Claire Underwood's office in House of Cards. I still don't think that program was fictional.

[Fist of Etiquette]

The same people who predicted Donald Trump would be a dictator now say a 'constitutional crisis' has already arrived, barely three weeks into his Presidency.

I was really expecting the doomsayers to recognize the folly of their apoplexy by now.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

Jeff, JFree, Buttplug, Molly/Tony, mtrueman and Sarcasmic have posted here for ages and yet you still think that they'd suddenly recognize their folly?
Why would they start now?

[Marshal]

I think his level of sarcasm is funnier than yours, and I'm looking for that in the morning.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

To be honest, I didn't notice it was Fist until your comment.

[MollyGodiva]

Folly? Trump is proving us right.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

About what?

All you've done is lie about what DOGE is, what it does, what it can access, how it was created, what authority it has, ad nauseum.

[MollyGodiva]

What have I said that is untrue? And please not that a fact you don't like does not make that fact untrue.
DOGE now has taken over all hiring in the federal government.

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

You say a lot that’s ignorant and nonfactual. You also seem to lack a sense of humor.

This is one of those ignorant things. Do you have a link and a citation that DOGE has taken over hiring?

[MollyGodiva]

I do have a link, but unfortunately the head of the organization which supplies the information is known for lying and dishonesty.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/implementing-the-presidents-department-of-government-efficiency-workforce-optimization-initiative/

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

1. That's an Executive Order, not a fucking opinion or report, so how the hell can there be "diShOneStY"?

2. There is nothing in there that gives DOGE authority to hire or fire. It says the Department must consult DOGE.

[MollyGodiva]

Trump gave a private individual control over who the government hires and what jobs can be posted. That is scary.

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

You have a citation and a link for that assertion? Otherwise, STFU, Molly.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

NO HE DIDN'T, you lying fuck.
That isn't even remotely true.
You didn't even bother to read the executive order you linked to.
Why?
It wasn't even long.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

ChatGPT analysis:

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) does not appear to have the direct authority to hire or fire employees based on the language of this executive order. The relevant provisions primarily involve the following:

Hiring Oversight, Not Direct Hiring Authority

Section 3(b) establishes that hiring decisions for new career appointments must be made "in consultation with the agency’s DOGE Team Lead" (not by DOGE alone).

Section 3(b)(ii) states that DOGE Team Leads can assess whether positions should not be filled, but the final hiring decision rests with the Agency Head if they determine a position should be filled.

Section 3(b)(iii) requires DOGE Team Leads to submit monthly hiring reports, reinforcing an oversight and advisory role rather than direct authority over hiring.

No Direct Firing Authority

Section 3(c) grants Agency Heads the authority to initiate reductions in force (RIFs) but does not mention DOGE having any firing authority.

While DOGE Team Leads play an advisory role, only Agency Heads appear to have the power to execute workforce reductions.
DOGE’s Role is Advisory and Oversight-Oriented

DOGE Team Leads provide assessments and reports, but ultimate personnel decisions remain with Agency Heads.

The order focuses on reducing waste and inefficiency rather than granting DOGE independent hiring/firing authority.

Conclusion:

DOGE itself does not have the authority to hire or fire employees. Instead, it acts as an oversight and advisory body, with hiring and firing decisions remaining under the purview of Agency Heads.

[MollyGodiva]

You can't read the EO yourself?

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

Damn, you’re retarded, even for the typical troll standards here.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

I did. And then I got ChatGPT to summarize it for you, because you sure as fuck didn't read it.

This is what happens when you cut and paste your talking-points from the Media Matters memo without actually bothering to double-check, shill.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

So you post a link that doesn't actually say what you claim it does. Talk about shriek-tier propaganda.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Asks for something he said that was untrue, immediately provides that something. Lol.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

Right here: "Trump is proving us right"

"DOGE now has taken over all hiring in the federal government"

How the fuck are you going to back up that retarded assertion?
DOGE hasn't hired or fired a single fucking person. All they do is audit. The people get fired by the department chiefs when they find out about the chicanery.

DOGE's like a guy is looking at video footage of a robbery and when he tells the bosses what he saw, you get mad at him instead of the robber.

[Chipper Chunked Chile Con Congress (ex NCW)]

How the fuck are you going to back up that retarded assertion?

It's not. But it harvested your attention for the amount of time it took to write your response anyway.

And people say AI can't accomplish anything.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

What have I said that is untrue?

All of it.

DOGE now has taken over all hiring in the federal government.

This is just adding to your blatant bullshit effort.

[Bananas]

What he's saying is as dumb as saying Deloitte & Touche is in charge of firing everyone in the banking industry.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

I guarantee you TonyGodiva has no idea who they are.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Cope more. Or not. Free people don't care about whining, lying simps like you.

[MollyGodiva]

Trump is proving all the "doomsayers" right.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

Point out one, just one thing you've been right about, Tony.

[MollyGodiva]

We knew that Trump would illegally fire federal employees. He is doing that. We knew he would ignore Congress, he is doing that.

You always see a rush of legislation from a new President to Congress in the first few months. Trump is not doing that. Why? Because he does not care if what he is doing is legal.

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

Go reread the judge’s decision, dip. Offering the buyouts is not illegal. This is actually fairly typical (and far more generous than) for private industry.

[MollyGodiva]

I never mentioned the "buyouts". This is about him firing people illegally.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

There's nothing illegal about the President firing employees of the executive branch.

[MollyGodiva]

Yes, yes there is. Congress has put in laws a that prevent exactly what Trump is doing.

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

Dumbass, Congress cannot make laws to regulate the internal functions of the executive branch per Article II. Demonstrate in either article (1 or 2) where your claim is true.

[MollyGodiva]

Congress created all of the internal functions of the executive branch. Of course they can make laws to regulate it. Try getting your information somewhere other than Faux news.

Article 1 Section 8:

"To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;"

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

What does the clause you posted have to do with what you claim it effects?

[soldiermedic76]

What article of the Constitution created an unaccountable bureaucratic branch Molly, you fucking dipshit? Who is the head of the executive branch again? The President or Congress? Do you understand separation of powers? Obviously fucking not.

[DesigNate]

She 100% thinks Congress rules over the other branches.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Yes, yes there is. Congress has put in laws a that prevent exactly what Trump is doing.

No, no there isn't. You don't even know the laws you're appealing to.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

A court literally disagrees with you just yesterday.

[MollyGodiva]

The court said the party did not have standing. That was not a ruling on the merits. But my comment has nothing to do with the "buyouts".

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

Obviously Molly, your reading comprehension sucks some major donkey dick.

[Jefferson Paul]

So now you say getting your suit rejected for standing is not the same as rejecting for merit. I seem to recall you conflating Trump losing his 2020 lawsuits for standing with being rejected for merit. So you conflate the two when it suits your purposes, but distinguish the two now with this lawsuit.

[Marshal]

We have to forgive Molly, this is her first foray into effective governance and she's lost. This expectation that the correct process is to figure out what is and is not working before spending trillions to "fix" it has her flummoxed.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

"We have to forgive Molly,.."

No, we don't have to forgive that slimy pile of dishonest lefty shit. S/he deserves every insult s/he gets.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

We knew that Trump would illegally fire federal employees. He is doing that.

Nothing about their firing is illegal. Not one drop, and I challenge you to provide an actual example, liar.

[DesigNate]

She never will.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

What do you think happens when you say it three times?

[Jefferson Paul]

The Candyman Orangeman comes and kills you.

[Super Scary]

" barely three weeks into his Presidency."

Boy, time really does fly when you're having fun.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

A sober big-picture take: "The same people who predicted Donald Trump would be a dictator now say a 'constitutional crisis' has already arrived, barely three weeks into his Presidency. They're overwrought as usual, and readers may appreciate a less apocalyptic breakdown about Mr. Trump's actions and whether they do or don't breach the normal checks and balances," writes The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. "Mr. Trump's domestic-policy decisions so far strike us as falling into three categories. Most rest on strong legal ground. Some are legally debatable and could go either way in court. In still others Mr. Trump appears to be breaking current law deliberately to tee up cases that will go to the Supreme Court to restore what he considers to be constitutional norms. None of these is a constitutional crisis." Full thing is worth a read.

Can you demand your coworkers read this liz?

We know jeffshrikesarc won't.

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

She can try, but boehmsullum won’t read it either.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

boehmsullumlancaster

[Ra's al Gore]

US Treasury says it was hacked by China in 'major incident'
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3weye2j0e7o

[Don't look at me! (No longer muted!)]

So much for security clearances and permission from congress.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Joe may have granted them clearances. He didn't know what he was doing.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

But Hunter did.

[Spiritus Mundi]

Can't have 'Big Balls' looking at all that sensitive info. It is super secret.

[Don't look at me! (No longer muted!)]

Yesterday, the press was asking to see what was found.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Bunch of MAGA Nazis!

[Jefferson Paul]

The left thinks it would be preferable to have a blue-haired transgender woman named "No Balls" looking at all that sensitive info.

[Ra's al Gore]

UK demands ability to access Apple users’ encrypted data
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/07/uk-confronts-apple-with-demand-for-cloud-backdoor-to-users-encrypted-data

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

Lee Zeldin Just Discovered $20 Billion Laundered by the Biden Admin

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Bidens staff was busy putting billions in random banks like chase to show the funding as spent so Trump couldn't cut the spending.

Always the money laundering.

[damikesc]

There needs to be charges filed on that. If we're going to charge ANYBODY for money laundering, we HAVE to charge this crap for that.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

A look at the group who newly formed the 501c given 7B through this money laundering.

https://x.com/EaglesTTT/status/1889898688149070274

[Medulla Oblongata]

The characterization goes back a ways, too...and it's self-inflicted.

Even with the ouster of founder James O’Keefe, Project Veritas is still around and catching bureaucrats eager to talk about their nefarious schemes with taxpayer money. On December 3, the organization released an undercover interview with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employee Brent Efron. According to Efron, the EPA is doling out taxpayer funds to nongovernmental organizations before President Donald Trump can take office.

“Throwing Gold Bars Off the Edge”
Efron, a special advisor implementing Biden’s climate agenda, spoke about his role in giving out over $100 billion in grants before Trump takes office. The money is coming from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which Efron described as “Biden’s climate law.”

“Now it’s how to get the money out as fast as possible before they [the Trump administration] come in.… It’s like we’re on the Titanic and we’re throwing gold bars off the edge,” Efron said.

"The thing that we haven’t funded yet are [sic] the local nonprofit program that was going to be an inter-Kamala Harris administration program…. So now we’re getting it [funding] out as quick as possible. It’s like two billion at this point, we’ve got most of it out — like ninety percent.

"Over the last year we’ve given out $50 billion dollars for climate things … so to go work for one of these places would be really cool.

https://thenewamerican.com/us/throwing-gold-bars-off-the-titanic-epa-throwing-tax-dollars-to-climate-groups-in-wake-of-trumps-win/

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Arrest, try, convict, and then slowly execute Efron. To DIScourage the others.

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

Hanging, drawing, and quartering should make a comeback.

[soldiermedic76]

Besides this, he is a shitty actor? Wrong Efron?

[Fist of Etiquette]

Most rest on strong legal ground. Some are legally debatable and could go either way in court. In still others Mr. Trump appears to be breaking current law deliberately to tee up cases that will go to the Supreme Court to restore what he considers to be constitutional norms.

Trump should just shut up and cancel evictions/student debt.

[Medulla Oblongata]

Why not just cancel mortgages held by Fannie/Freddie?

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Ooh, ooh, I know! Cancel debts for anyone willing to publicly declare they voted for Trump.

[Ra's al Gore]

Why Taylor Swift Getting Booed at the Super Bowl Was Even More Chilling Than You Think
https://www.glamour.com/story/why-taylor-swift-getting-booed-at-the-super-bowl-was-even-more-chilling-than-you-think

Perhaps the moment would have felt less visceral if not for the fact that less than an hour earlier the crowd had exploded—this time with applause—to see Trump on that same screen. As an image of the president, stonefaced and standing in a salute, was shown to the crowd during Jon Batiste’s national anthem performance, the roar of approval and cheers was deafening (of course, there were those in the crowd who booed the president and cheered for Swift as well, but from my vantage point, it was clear what the overall sentiment was).

To me, the disparate reactions felt like a message. That the Super Bowl, one of the biggest cultural events in the country, has been reclaimed by Trump and the type of toxic masculinity he appears to be the beacon of. And he and his supporters seem to be living for it.

[Don't look at me! (No longer muted!)]

Football isn’t masculine?

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

A single female flag football player could beat the eagles according to Nike.

[Don't look at me! (No longer muted!)]

To be fair, she might have had a shot at the chiefs.

[Rev Arthur L kuckland (5-30-24 banana republic day)]

And one ccp member can beat 1000 uugyers to make Nike shoes cheaper

[mad.casual]

Softball, Slow pitch softball, Flag Football... it's like they've been driven from their native territory by the predatory trans individuals and are overtaking the sports from the lesser Special Education packs and tribes.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

Masculinity and femininity aren't toxic. Weak, bitter ineffective men and women with axes to grind are toxic.

[DesigNate]

Fucking this.

[Ra's al Gore]

https://pjmedia.com/caskeet/2025/02/13/no-booing-taylor-swift-is-not-misogyny-n4936940

The Super Bowl attendees who booed her have none of that, and Stephanie McNeal wants to keep it that way. Stephanie doesn't write about their life stories, or their journeys, or their challenges, or their outlooks on life. Nor is she required to. There's no glamour there. There are no fancy clothes or red carpet runways.

But for a few seconds at the Super Bowl, the hoi polloi had the rare opportunity to make their voices heard. When they dared to express themselves, Stephanie McNeal did her best to beat them back down. The nerve of this rabble! The audacity of these peasants! Who are they to criticize us? Go back to the trailer park, and stay there until I call you to come fix my toilet.

If systemic misogyny is Stephanie's bugaboo, well, there seems to be plenty of it going around, far beyond the walls of Caesar's Superdome. If booing Taylor Swift at a football game is indisputable proof of systemic misogyny, how much more misogynistic would it be had a violent mob physically blocked Taylor Swift from taking the stage and speaking to her supporters at a private event? Because that's what leftists did to Heather MacDonald at Claremont College.

How misogynistic would be the specter of a female political activist advocating for women's rights being physically beaten? Because that's what leftists did to Riley Gaines at the University of San Francisco.

How misogynistic would be the doxxing, canceling, and daily murder threats to a female author and sexual assault survivor? Because that's what leftists do to J.K. Rowling.

How misogynistic would it be to deny a female refugee police protection and evict her from her house because she publicly spoke out against domestic abuse and female genital mutilation? Because that's what leftists did to Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Roughly a month ago in New Orleans itself, where Stephanie McNeal courageously braved the drunken legions of MAGA deplorables, Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar murdered fourteen people, three of them women and one of the women a teenager.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

"Why Taylor Swift Getting Booed at the Super Bowl Was Even More Chilling Than You Think"

How many people of whatever genders think like a depressed, fear-addicted 13 year old girl?

[Chipper Chunked Chile Con Congress (ex NCW)]

All but two.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Liz Wolfe
@LizWolfeReason
·
Follow
Why is this goddamn city so obsessed with padlocking playgrounds

Locking open air areas was so effective under Obama. Should have been louder then.

It is a form of their soft attacks on citizens to get them to comply. Just like under Obama or during covid.

[Don't look at me! (No longer muted!)]

The sign said it was closed for icy conditions. The pavement looked dry to me.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Which of us didn't slide down icy hills, yes even in Arizona, during the global cooling of the 70s and 80s?

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

Icy driveways into streets or icy hills down toward a chain link fence just before a busy river.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Whats a river? Do you mean dry washes?

[Don't look at me! (No longer muted!)]

That’s after you get through the jumping cholla bushes.

[Incunabulum]

I fell into one of those as a child. Fell off a stone wall, rolled down a hill, and ended up in one.

That sucked.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

I had to look up what a cholla bush was. Yikes.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

I will happily trade you cat's claw (acacia) for cholla.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

We have those too.

Plants in Arizona are like animals in Australia.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

We only have wild roses around here and they're practically a feather bed compared to those nightmares.

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

Geeze. We have a number of thorny bushes in the Midwest, but nothing quite like that. You’ll just spend a day and a half removing all the burrs.

[Chipper Chunked Chile Con Congress (ex NCW)]

Yeah... if beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy, cholla is proof that he occasionally wants us to suffer from that happiness as well.

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

No, a real, working river with barges and towboats on it. The trick was to see how close to the fence (the only barrier there) you could sled to at the bottom of the hill.

[Rev Arthur L kuckland (5-30-24 banana republic day)]

Get bolt cutters

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Portable grinders are easier. And noisier, but that could be a good thing.

[mad.casual]

The goddamned fence is 4 ft tall. Lift the kid over. Plant your foot on the Oompa Loompa's shoulder there to the left, put the other one at the top of the fence and lift your ass over.

The Moose says you're closed. I say you're open.

[Chipper Chunked Chile Con Congress (ex NCW)]

Honestly, my guess would be that if they don't, zombies "camp" there.

[Ra's al Gore]

Ayanna Pressley really just said she will work with anyone who's serious about "censoring the American people"
https://notthebee.com/article/ayanna-pressley-says-she-will-work-with-anyone-who-will-censor-americans

[Marshal]

That's fantastic. I listened expecting them to say something that was effectively censorship while trying to pretend it wasn't. But no, she actually explicitly demands "censorship" on Americans. It's just astonishing what these people think is acceptable. The mask is still coming off.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Fucktards are now screaming the quiet part out loud. This really could lead to their demise (or national divorce).

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

Analysis in link:

Famed legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin is joining New York Times Opinion

[Don't look at me! (No longer muted!)]

Did he promise to keep his junk in his pants?

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

His opinions will be very explosive.

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

He’ll show his arousal through them.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

His opinions will be hard hitting. Total grasp of the facts.

[Don't look at me! (No longer muted!)]

He may face stiff opposition.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

I'm pulling for him.

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

He may cum with some baggage.

[Marshal]

Famed for what?

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

Yes.

[Fist of Etiquette]

None of these is a constitutional crisis."

The DNC isn't made of paper. The "Constitutional Crisis" media talking points were already printed on the back of the "Vance Is Weird" memo. It just has to run its course.

[Marshal]

The important takeaway is recognizing the phrase Constitutional Crisis is not true, it's just more propaganda. Everything they say is designed to drive political hysteria, truth simply isn't a relevant concern.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

How many Democrats had to Google "Constitution"?

[Marshal]

None of them cared what it meant or that they understand. They only care if it worked.

[Chipper Chunked Chile Con Congress (ex NCW)]

It just has to run its course.

Like Covid did, in the end?

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

"The plaintiffs argued that their terminations violated federal statutes meant to protect them from interference in carrying out their 'critical, non-partisan oversight duties.'" The plaintiffs include inspectors general of the Departments of Defense, Labor, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, Education, State, and Agriculture, as well as the Small Business Administration.

A) there is no such thing as non partisan.
B) we already went through this in 2017. All political appointees serve at the whim of the president. Congress can not modify his power to fire political appointees. Yes IGs are politically appointed.

[Medulla Oblongata]

There seems to be a law requiring 30 days not to Congress when firing IGs. Trump should just say, "Oh, my bad. Here's your 30-day notice. They're fired 30 days from right...NOW!" (countdown clock starts).

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Congress can't modify article 2 powers.

[Medulla Oblongata]

Trump should certainly go to court to demonstrate that. Meantime tick..tick..tick..(ding!) "You're NOW fired."

[mamabug]

That law is constitutionally dubious, though, as it is a restriction on the President's ability to fire/remove his appointees. The only explicit say congress has is confirming certain appointees (advice and consent).

[MollyGodiva]

All career civil servants are non-partisan by law. Trump can not fire them at will.
There are some political appointees that Trump can do with as he pleases.

[Medulla Oblongata]

I guess we'll see what SCOTUS has to say about that.

Sarc: It's okay because Democrats did it first...

https://cei.org/blog/trump-follows-biden-precedent-in-sacking-nlrb-general-counsel/

President Trump’s decision to fire National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Chairwoman Gwynne Wilcox and general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo is controversial and will likely be challenged in court. Those disturbed by the firings, however, should remember that President Biden created the precedent for incoming administrations to reshape the NLRB when he fired then-NLRB general counsel Peter Robb, a move that aroused little controversy at the time.

See also Shurtleff v. United States, and Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

"...All career civil servants are non-partisan by law..."

Peak 'tard.

[soldiermedic76]

Which article or amendment to the Constitution says that? Who is the head of the executive branch and how can Congress violate separation of powers to determine how the President manages the executive branch?

[soldiermedic76]

Also, will you commit MAID (please) when the USSC slaps your thesis down like the bitch that you are?

[soldiermedic76]

Hell, I almost think this one can go 9-0 or at worst 7-2.

[Medulla Oblongata]

"All career civil servants are non-partisan by law"

Um. No. SCOTUS has already determined that some CAN be fired, even though Congress said they couldn't. And SCOTUS has been whittling away the reasoning why more of the others not already included in previous things should also be able to be fired. And SCOTUS may be poised to reverse Humphrey's Executor precedent as wrongly decided.

[Fist of Etiquette]

800 trucks of humanitarian aid entered Gaza earlier today, and Hamas has reciprocated by assuring Israel it will follow through on its commitment to release more hostages.

They all want a penthouse suite at the Gaza Trump Tower.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

With private tunnel access?

[Fist of Etiquette]

Ah, my illustrious city, padlocking playgrounds so 2-year-olds can't play on them.

Trump is in office. The Monkey Pox can't hurt them now.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

Chemjeffreyism is cooked. The support for progressivism in the last decade was a CIA mirage:

Isn't the easiest answer to why Jeffries is struggling to mount an Anti-Trump resistance is that the President, Elon, & DOGE have shut off the money tap for the astroturfed protest operations, &, it's hard to fuel genuine opposition to an agenda that’s popular with the people?

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

Turns out Trump and Musk managed to hit the heart of the beast first, the information and financial dissemination center. Cutting off USAID funding seems to have paid dividends well beyond just the $50 billion.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

Yeah, I thought the first thing they had to do was hit the FBI, but cutting the blob off from it's slush fund was a far better idea.

"USAID", it sounds so friendly and thoughtful, it even has 'AID' in it.

Turns out the 'AID' stands for 'Agency for International Development' rather than 'aid', and it's an external intelligence service made to handle the dirty stuff even the CIA doesn't want to touch, rather than Grants and Contributions Agency.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Let's see what Tulsi can add to the wrecking crew.

[Medulla Oblongata]

Jeff says we need to recongize when they're sorry and when their culture says it's ok to do things...

----------
Mexican Caught Smuggling Migrants on Trains, Gets Pathetic Sentence by Liberal State

While U.S. District Court Judge James Robart talked tough, his actions told a different story. He acknowledged Ortiz-Plata’s “extensive career” in human smuggling and “callous” disdain for human life. Yet the punishment hardly fits the crime.

From ‘The Post Millennial’:

“This organization took lethal risks with noncitizen’s lives, putting the migrants in horrendous situations that could have easily resulted in death,” the United States District Attorney for the Western District of Washington wrote in a sentencing memo.

The investigation revealed horrifying details that demanded serious prison time. Authorities discovered 29 illegal aliens hidden inside a single rail car. They were concealed among bulk plastic pellets. Human cargo, transported like merchandise – and the mastermind gets just 15 months.

[mamabug]

15 months followed by a free trip to Cuba.

[Chipper Chunked Chile Con Congress (ex NCW)]

That's just cruel. We should pony up to send him all the way to the Congo.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Following Elon Musk's comments earlier in the week about DOGE being maximally transparent, he has started populating its website with updates on what they've cut so far.

And just how much is this webserver costing me?

[Medulla Oblongata]

Democrats weren't happy when he was posting them on his own platform.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. looks set to be confirmed today as secretary of Health and Human Services. But why has there been so little organized opposition from Big Pharma?

TRUMP HAS THEM COWED.

[Spiritus Mundi]

Too busy trying to find lawyers and hide their money in LLCs.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Eight of the federal agency watchdogs abruptly fired by President Trump last month filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging their terminations.

Their watchings were a little too passive.

[Spiritus Mundi]

They never saw it coming.

[Don't look at me! (No longer muted!)]

If they didn’t see it coming, they deserve to be canned.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

That's what happens when your owners enforce a vegan diet.

[Medulla Oblongata]

"They're overwrought as usual, and readers may appreciate a less apocalyptic breakdown about Mr. Trump's"

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/02/07/if-you-genuinely-think-trump-is-a-fascist-go-and-have-a-lie-down/

Anyone who genuinely thinks that Trump’s America – whatever else you might think of the man or his policies – can be mentioned in the same breath as fascist Italy or Nazi Germany needs to get a grip.

Because let’s be clear about what we are talking about here. Fascism, and especially its Nazi incarnation, was an evil the like of which the world had never seen before. Or, thankfully, since.

Totalitarian control. Messianic dictatorship. A cult of racial superiority. Paramilitaries crushing the left at home. A Darwinian military struggle for supremacy abroad. The worship of war and violence. The mechanised attempt to murder all of Europe’s Jews.

If this sounds anything like America in 2025 to you, then I suggest you leave here right now and go and have a nice, long lie down.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Jeffsarc are about to cry.

[Chupacabra]

SLOW DOWN!!!

[I, Woodchipper]

Fascism, and especially its Nazi incarnation, was an evil the like of which the world had never seen before.

Disagree, unless you only look at scale and you only include post industrial history.

But i agree completely that the hysteria from lefties that Trump admin is just like nazi germany is delusional.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

I agree. Leftists tend to have selective memories. One word: Cambodia.

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

I’ll add to that everything Mao did in China.

[I, Woodchipper]

That's an interesting point and there's two different aspects of what it means for a nation or people to be "evil".

One is the harm it inflicts on the peoples around it, like the Nazis, Gengis Khan, the Assyrians

Another is the evils it inflicts on its own people, like Mao's China or Bolshevik Russia or Cambodia. Notice a theme there ... I can think of no examples from antiquity that even remotely approach the evil that modern regimes have inflicted on their own peoples.

[See.More]

... I can think of no examples from antiquity that even remotely approach the evil that modern regimes have inflicted on their own peoples.

Well... technological advancement is a force multiplier.

[soldiermedic76]

Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Kim's, fuck even Diap and Ho Chi Minh.

[soldiermedic76]

The Turks, they just weren't as efficient as the Nazis.

[Chipper Chunked Chile Con Congress (ex NCW)]

Given that someone in the comments there tried to defend Pol Pot, you aren't kidding.

[Incunabulum]

>Fascism, and especially its Nazi incarnation, was an evil the like of which the world had never seen before. Or, thankfully, since.

Even the people telling you to calm down about fascism don't seem to know what fascism is.

*Most of the world* is fascist or fascist-leaning. What do you call the EU when it demands the ability to censor speech and control industry? When it pushes a 'great nation' myth?

National mythos and third-way economics - not racism - are the hallmarks of fascism.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Let's review the Obama-Biden and almost Harris regime.
Totalitarian control. Check.
Messianic dictatorship. Nearly there.
A cult of racial superiority. In a way, with critical theory and anti-racism.
Paramilitaries crushing the [opposition] at home. USAID and friends.
A Darwinian military struggle for supremacy abroad. If they could, starting with Ukraine.
The worship of war and violence. Aka "Resist!"
The mechanised attempt to murder all of [America's conservatives]. Starting with camps.

Sounds pretty fascist to me.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D–Hawaii) was just confirmed and sworn in as director of national intelligence.

Trump is letting a lot of D's in the cockhouse.

[Fist of Etiquette]

THA'TS RIGHT; I SAID IT.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

That took some big balls to say. May get Harry for you.

[Spiritus Mundi]

Spending $101 million dollars on DEI grants strikes me as the truly wasteful thing. Do American taxpayers actually want that?

Alas, some do. Like jeffy. How are trannies going to read porn to kids without all that DEI money?

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

Molly seems to be in favor of it too, judging from her comments yesterday.

[MollyGodiva]

DEI is about non-discrimination and always has been. Despite what MAGAs say, it is not affirmative action or quotas. For example, DEI includes the effort to make workplaces accommodating for the disabled. EEO is DEI. Being against DEI is being for discrimination.

MAGAs are lying about what DEI is and are setting the US back decades on the issue of equal opportunity.

[I, Woodchipper]

Good lord.

[Spiritus Mundi]

Long haired freaky people white males need not apply.

[MollyGodiva]

Again, no, no, no, no. DEI is not about quotas or discrimination. It is about non-discrimination.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

"...DEI is not about quotas or discrimination. It is about non-discrimination..."

And I have controlling interest in the north anchorage of a nearby bridge you can have at a very favorable price, sucker.

[Marshal]

DEI is about a large number of things, all of them shitty. For example they teach 5 year old black kids that their white friend who sits next to them and lives in their neighborhood is oppressing them.
So really all of it can be summarized as community relations.

Luckily the sort of hatred DEI promotes has been failing for decades which is why the left is so eager to restore it. Nowadays black kids are unlikely to internalize the leftist approved amount of hatred unless they at least attend undergrad in a Grievance Studies major.

[Super Scary]

"it is not affirmative action or quotas."

That is explicitly what it is. Who do you think you're fooling here?

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

You are either extremely stupid or extremely evil (but not very convincing).

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

Molly is all three at once.

[DesigNate]

lol, wut

[Fist of Etiquette]

Now a new chair of the Kennedy Center has assumed power: The Donald himself.

The next Kennedy Center Honors is going to be lit.

[Marshal]

Normally I would love this, the spectacle of left wingers making fools of themselves never gets old. But now without USAID who is going to buy the tickets so the losers can protest?

[Medulla Oblongata]

"padlocking playgrounds"

It's for your safety Liz!

More likely, so that they can more readily decry liability for people who hurt themselves on frozen equipment.

[Randy Sax]

I got a concussion playing around on one of these, the first picture on this article. To be fair, me and my buddies were pretty drunk at the time.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/642404/dangerous-vintage-playground-equipment

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Were you 3 years old?

[Randy Sax]

23

[Chipper Chunked Chile Con Congress (ex NCW)]

Still young enough to forcibly impose yourself on your parent's health insurance as a "child"!

[Fist of Etiquette]

The House budget would allow about $4 trillion more debt through 2034, with interest.

Calm down. We'll just print more money to service it.

[Randy Sax]

Next easiest dept to cut after edu, agriculture. USDA is just a subsidy supplier, like edu. I know a farmer who intentionally floods one of his fields every other year because he knows that field has a low yield and he will make more money flooding it in checks from the USDA that actually harvesting it.

[Use the Schwartz]

"padlocking playgrounds so 2-year-olds can't play on them."

Compact bolt cutters will fit in a purse or messenger bag. They likely can't cut the lock, but they will cut the chain.

Lose your fear of misdemeanors, misbehave.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

But if the orders came from a Democratic regime, that's not brave resistance, that's subversive treason.

[Medulla Oblongata]

Why were US taxpayers funding LGBTQIA+ help to refugees and asylum seekers in Greece? Why should the US taxpayers be funding ANY refugees mental health in Greece?

Doge.gov:

While looking into this, the team identified a $25,000 award entitled “Empowering LGBTQIA+ Refugees in Greece” with the description “To provide material, legal and psychological support to LGBTQIA+ asylum seekers and refugees; inform and raise awareness of civil society on issues faced by the LGBTQIA+ community.” It has now been cancelled.

[soldiermedic76]

Especially in Greece... That's the last place I think we need to do any LGBTQ+ empowering.

[Randy Sax]

Lets start a new citizenship transfer program. If you are a blue-haired tranny and worried about all the poor little Mexicans, you can give your citizenship to one of them. But then you have to be deported.

[Marshal]

I think we should expand eligibility to everyone, then bar anyone still retaining their personal immigration grant from advocating on behalf of others.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Let's just go by economic productivity.

[Chipper Chunked Chile Con Congress (ex NCW)]

No, I disagree. I'm absolutely willing to let even the least productive American citizen hand theirs off to basically any South American who can pass a basic criminal background check. Anybody who would deserves what they get. Such as Venezuelan citizenship!

[Ra's al Gore]

I wonder if the FBI had a pre existing relationship with TdA to have the right contact info to tip them off. The FBI would never work with foreign criminal gangs, would they?

https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/fbi-homan-ice
NEW: Border Czar Tom Homan says the FBI believes they have found the ICE raid leaker who leaked to Tren de Aragua, says they will be going to jail.

Homan says the leaker is likely in the FBI who tipped off the violent gang members.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

Make an example of him.

[Medulla Oblongata]

Pam Bondi Announces Charges Against Kathy Hochul, Letitia James

New York has a "green light" law that allows illegal aliens in the state to evade ID checks if law enforcement pulls them over, Bondi said. It prohibits police and other agencies like the DMV from sharing data with federal authorities for purposes of immigration enforcement.

"They have a 'tip-off' provision that requires New York's DMV commissioner to promptly inform any illegal alien when a federal immigration agency has requested their information," Bondi further explained. "It's tipping off an illegal alien. And it's unconstitutional, and that's why we filed this lawsuit."

[I, Woodchipper]

I notice the MSM is hardly touching this one, only being discussed on X and forums like this.

This is a HUGE scandal. US government law enforcement undermining itself, clandestinely aiding and abetting murderous illegal alien gangs? WTF.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

The deep state funded terrorist organizations tied to Bin Laden and enabled ISIS to go off the chain. There's no illogic in assuming that they are absolutely involved in bringing a next-level violent immigrant gang to the US and protecting them from being deported, probably for some stupid purpose like using them to counter the Mexican Mafia or just bog-standard left-wing subversion of the US itself.

[Marshal]

They aren't going to say anything until they both (1) identify the approved attack and (b) train all relevant forces. The left isn't exactly a decentralized model of command.

[Medulla Oblongata]

". Tulsi Gabbard (D–Hawaii) was just confirmed and sworn in as director of national intelligence."

The crawler on my local NBC news this morning gleefully informed me that "Ms. Gabbard has no formal experience in intelligence nor in running a government agency or department"

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

"Ms. Gabbard has no formal experience in intelligence nor in running a government agency or department"

Imagine thinking that this isn't her biggest selling point.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

She does have experience being abused by the IC though.

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

Wait a minute, D-Hawaii? Gabbard is no longer a Democrat.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

To be fair, she might be a Democrat in a category that no longer exists. And officially ejected from the modern progressive version of the tribe, like Musk, Taibbi, etc.

[mad.casual]

"Ms. Gabbard has no formal experience in intelligence nor in running a government agency or department"

Also, she's a woman.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Are you a biologist?

[Chipper Chunked Chile Con Congress (ex NCW)]

As far as Tulsi is concerned? Yes. Yes I am.

[I, Woodchipper]

Now do the tranny baggage thief that was in charge of nuclear waste under biden lol

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

That's (D)ifferent, as ever.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

So, so (D)ifferent. Like (D)elusional, (D)epraved, (D)isgusting (D)ifferent.

[soldiermedic76]

You already sold me, this is just icing on the cake.

[Ra's al Gore]

I totally want these motherfuckers in charge of my healthcare:

JD Vance’s 12-year-old relative denied heart transplant because she is unvaccinated
https://nypost.com/2025/02/12/us-news/jd-vances-12-year-old-relative-denied-heart-transplant-because-she-is-unvaccinated/

[Medulla Oblongata]

Or is it because she's related to Vance? Or because her parents mention the Holy Spirit?

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

Both will get you on a proggy death list.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

"...The consequences of school closures will likely be felt for years, probably decades," wrote Oster. "If we want to understand the consequences of these disruptions, we need systematic information on where they occurred..."

This should not be a surprise: https://gbdeclaration.org/
We have Fauci, Biden and (in CA) Newsom to thank for the disaster.

[Incunabulum]

>so about 3 percent of the civilian workforce

That's still pretty impressive - if a tech-bro company lays off 3% then everyone loses their minds.

[I, Woodchipper]

Also, this is peanuts compared to what Clinton did. We need to pump those numbers up.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Speaking of pumping up, get Trump an intern in a blue dress!

[Incunabulum]

>Consider the literacy crisis: on-grade-level reading has been in steep decline in the country—but it's gotten so bad in part because it's taken parents and teachers a while to wise up to issues with the "balanced literacy" curriculum model vs. phonics-based instruction. A whole generation of children has been harmed by this, and the crisis could've ostensibly been averted sooner had federal, state, and local governments had their acts together.

OMFG Wolfe! How could you miss this?

Where do think the 'balanced literacy curriculum' came from? The 'research' the federal government does. Why do you think it was so widespread? Because federal, state, and local governments *HAD THEIR ACTS TOGETHER!*

That is how it was able to be pushed out across the country - because all the levels of government were working together to 'research new pedagogy' and then coordinate to push it out to the local schools.

"I had a guaranteed Department of Education sale with Balanced Literacy! New programs to hire new administrators for! Consultant gigs for twenty-five years! Who cares if it worked or not?"

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Yup, their acts were quite effective. Just stupid and evil.

[soldiermedic76]

Fuck, I knew this as soon as my oldest (now 20) entered Kindergarten.

[Ra's al Gore]

https://twitchy.com/samj/2025/02/13/maxine-waters-just-gave-everything-up-what-they-have-on-us-n2408272

Deranged Maxine Waters badgers Jerome Powell about DOGE; lets the real worry slip:

“We don’t know what all they have on us."

[Don't look at me! (No longer muted!)]

Now that’s funny.

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

LOL! I can’t wait until the indictments start.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

'President Donald Trump and chief government auditor Elon Musk have set out to cut large chunks of the federal civilian workforce.'

NAZIS!!!

(Am I doing it right?)

[Moderation4ever]

Regarding Robert Kennedy Jr. and " But why has there been so little organized opposition from Big Pharma?". Big Pharma will benefit from less regulation and more sick people. There more profit in keeping people healthy with daily pills than there is with periodic vaccines. RK Jr. lack of knowledge and expensive will favor those with knowledge and experience and that is Big Pharma. I think that that is why there is little opposition.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

Fuck off and die, slimy pile of lefty shit.

[Ra's al Gore]

They are planning to undercut RFK behind the scenes instead of making a big public stand against the appointment.

[Don't look at me! (No longer muted!)]

Plus, they are experienced at dealing with trouble making Kennedy’s.

[Incunabulum]

>Scenes from New York: Ah, my illustrious city, padlocking playgrounds so 2-year-olds can't play on them.

I don't understand why you stay. The money can't be worth putting up with this crap on top of the rats.

[Chipper Chunked Chile Con Congress (ex NCW)]

Maybe she likes the rats, in the same sense Richard Gere "liked" certain rodents.

[Ra's al Gore]

Foreign Aid Agencies Awarded $27 Million To Group Helping Leftist Protesters Avoid Jail
https://dailycaller.com/2025/02/12/foreign-aid-agencies-awarded-27-million-to-group-helping-leftist-protesters-avoid-jail/

The State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded the funds to the left-wing Tides Foundation and Tides Center across several presidencies, federal spending records show. Conservative organizations and politicians are now scrutinizing how the agencies spend taxpayer money after President Donald Trump announced a review of foreign aid projects and shut down USAID.

....Among other philanthropic programs, the Tides Center and Tides Foundation fund left-leaning groups that provide attorney representation or other legal support for people accused of unlawful conduct at protests. In some cases, the sponsored groups have helped activists under federal investigation – meaning the U.S. government funded a movement trying to undermine its own law enforcement.

The Tides Center is a fiscal sponsor for Palestine Legal, an organization giving legal defense and advice to anti-Israel activists facing “repression” from universities or law enforcement. A senior attorney at Palestine Legal told a leftist magazine in January that the group “has represented or advised hundreds of students since” the Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7, 2023.

[Medulla Oblongata]

A devastating report from the Middle East Forum has exposed the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for distributing $164 million in grants to radical organizations.

At least $122 million went directly to groups aligned with designated terrorists and their supporters. The magnitude of this mismanagement defies explanation.

The investigation revealed USAID provided $900,000 to the Bayader Association for Environment and Development in Gaza. This organization operates in direct coordination with Hamas.

The timing is particularly alarming. The most recent payment arrived mere days before Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.

Sam Westrop, director of the Middle East Forum’s counter-extremism project, called the examples “horrifying.” The evidence shows USAID maintained funding even after terror connections became public. This suggests either catastrophic oversight failure or deliberate negligence.

A Pattern of Dangerous Decisions
This revelation represents just the tip of the iceberg. In 2015, USAID channeled $125,000 to the Islamic Relief Agency.

The U.S. Treasury had designated this organization as a terrorist entity in 2004. Their connection to Osama bin Laden was well-documented.

https://pjnewsletter.com/usaid-exposes-in-horrific-scand

[I, Woodchipper]

I like how USAID was *literally* funding terrorists and the democrats are screaming and howling "NO, you cant audit this!"

WTF

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

'Spending $101 million dollars on DEI grants strikes me as the truly wasteful thing. Do American taxpayers actually want that? Did we ever vote on that? Did those grants make our school system better?'

Do actual net taxpayers want to support DEI? Maybe a few but probably not the majority.

Did we ever vote on that? Sure, many times, but many voters pay little tax and thrive on spending other peoples' money.

Did it improve our school system? For those wallowing in virtue, either signaling or grifting, it sure did.

[Incunabulum]

>"The plaintiffs argued that their terminations violated federal statutes meant to protect them from interference in carrying out their 'critical, non-partisan oversight duties.'" The plaintiffs include inspectors general of the Departments of Defense, Labor, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, Education, State, and Agriculture, as well as the Small Business Administration.

USAID, the DOD can't pass an audit, the VA has hidden waiting lists to get on the waiting lists that killed people and the Phoenix VA director got promoted for it, etc, etc.

They're non-partisanly not doing their oversight jobs so they can go.

[soldiermedic76]

What's the point of an IG that refuse to investigate or correct government malfeasance?

[I, Woodchipper]

The Institute of Education Sciences, which conducts research on things like student achievement and school safety, has been obliterated.

I love the smell of government obliteration in the morning. Smells like victory.

[I, Woodchipper]

Sen. Patty Murray (D–Wash.), a former preschool teacher, said Musk was "taking a wrecking ball to high-quality research and basic data we need to improve our public schools.

Lol. Just lol. The sooner we get rid of public schools the better Patty.

[soldiermedic76]

Of course she is a former teacher, she definitely looks the part of the sour old school marm.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

The White House should play The Ride of the Valkyries when Trump enters a room.

[Chipper Chunked Chile Con Congress (ex NCW)]

I support this initiative.

[mad.casual]

Why is this goddamn city so obsessed with padlocking playgrounds

Fencing the playground to begin with... to have a gate to place a lock on... being a foregone conclusion.

[I, Woodchipper]

Spending $101 million dollars on DEI grants strikes me as the truly wasteful thing. Do American taxpayers actually want that?

the BIPOC types all want that. Every single black and mexican person I've ever known, either personally or professionally, is rabidly in favor of all things DEI. In anything, they dont think it goes far enough.

[Medulla Oblongata]

That is not my experience at all. Of course, most of the black people I know have been called race traitors, uncle tom, etc. by the blue-voting brothers.

[Marshal]

I agree with this. BIPOCs educated and involved in left wing politics absolutely support DEI overwhelmingly. But a majority of blacks in America support color blindness as a policy rejecting quotas, set asides, and other racial discrimination.

Our political class is extreme, the public is generally not so.

[MollyGodiva]

Black and Mexicans opposed to being discriminated against? Absurd. Next you will try to make me believe that people in wheelchairs are for ramps and elevators.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Yeah, but your side believes in reverse discrimination, which is what DEI actually is. Kendi and Diangelo, their chief architects have admitted it, and your political guru, Herbert Marcuse, laid the philosophical foundation for it.

So nothing you're claiming here about discrimination really needs to be taken at face value, you stupid lefty whore.

[Marshal]

There's no such thing as reverse discrimination, it's just discrimination.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

Yes, racists like Molly need to be called on their racism.

[MollyGodiva]

DEI is about non-discrimination. It is a MAGA lie that it is about quotas or affirmative action.

Soon MAGAs will say EEO is discrimination.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

No matter how many times you say that, we know it's not true (and we know you know that, too, you stupid cunt).

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

DEI is about non-discrimination.

Yeah, but your side believes in reverse discrimination, which is what DEI actually is. Kendi and Diangelo, their chief architects have admitted it, and your political guru, Herbert Marcuse, laid the philosophical foundation for it.

So nothing you're claiming here about discrimination really needs to be taken at face value, you stupid lefty whore.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

You really are retarded.

[InsaneTrollLogic (On The List!)]

DEI is all about discrimination, you retarded fuckwit.

[Medulla Oblongata]

Boils down to: Discrimination is good when my side does it.

“The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

Proposition 209 (also known as the California Civil Rights Initiative or CCRI) is a California ballot proposition which, upon approval in November 1996, amended the state constitution to prohibit state governmental institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, specifically in the areas of public employment, public contracting, and public education.

"The campaign for California’s Proposition 209 ballot initiative displayed the progression of racist ideas in their full effect: its proponents branded antiracist affirmative action as discriminatory, named the campaign and ballot measure the “civil rights initiative,” evoked the “dream” of Martin Luther King Jr. in an advertisement, and put a Black face on the campaign.

― Ibram X. Kendi

[Ra's al Gore]

All my life I kept hearing about wonderful compassionate intelligent Scandinavians and their wonderful socialism. Was that only possible with US govt subsidy?

Norwegian Refugee Council NGO to suspend some aid work across 20 countries due to Trump policy
https://www.reuters.com/world/norwegian-refugee-council-ngo-suspend-aid-work-over-20-countries-due-trump-2025-02-10/
The non-governmental organisation received just under 20% of its funding from the United States in 2024, or around $150 million, it said, with that funding helping some 1.6 million people worldwide.

[I, Woodchipper]

This sounds like monument budgeting to me. They can't cut 20% of fat and overhead? I'm sure they can.

[Marshal]

It makes you wonder how much was just paying salaries for useless left wingers who believed real work was beneath them. This aristocratic belief that production even as a merchant was too low status goes back at least to the Roman Empire.

[mad.casual]

All of this is weird and monarchical, but perhaps the weirdest thing about it is that the Kennedy Center is funded via taxpayer dollars.

Also, $150M/1.6M = fuck that whole notion of Scandinavian ingenuity and pragmatic efficiency.

[soldiermedic76]

Pretty damn efficient to get the US to fund your virtue signaling while you ask bash the US for not doing enough to fund foreign aide.

[soldiermedic76]

Also there is a myth, similar to the myth of Arthur or Charlemagne coming back in times of need, regarding Harald Hardrada. Definitely think it's time for him to get off his ass and come back.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

'A whole generation of children has been harmed by this, and the crisis could've ostensibly been averted sooner had federal, state, and local governments had their acts together.'

Liz, those agencies HAD their acts together, but pushed agendas other than (and often opposed to) learning fundamental academic skills.

[I, Woodchipper]

The purpose of a system is what it does.

[soldiermedic76]

This is what happens when you spend more time and money teaching educational theory to Ed majors than the actual subjects they're going to teach and when over half of all Ed graduates now are in Education Administration.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

'Scenes from New York: Ah, my illustrious city, padlocking playgrounds so 2-year-olds can't play on them.'

Teach 'em young that Trump is bad. And that "resisting" is better than play.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

'Robert F. Kennedy Jr. looks set to be confirmed today as secretary of Health and Human Services. But why has there been so little organized opposition from Big Pharma? asks Politico. "'They think he's the wrong person for the job,' said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, one of the few groups to openly decry Kennedy's bid to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. 'With good respect to all my buddies, they're making the false assumption that if they stay silent, they will get something in return.'"'

Or they think they have us by the balls and own enough of our government to continue the regime.

[I, Woodchipper]

"Israel and Hamas agreed to a phased deal with the first phase consisting of a 42-day cease-fire and Hamas' release of 33 Israeli hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners,

I dont have any dog in this fight but I am certain that will happen is this:

Hamas will wait til they get this prisoner exchange done and get their millions of dollars of "aid" that they will siphon off from the public and put towards planning more attacks on Israel, which will be launched within a year or two, partially funded by Iran and partially funded by remnant USAID monies.

[Medulla Oblongata]

"release of the remaining living hostages."

Hamas: nope...we don't have any more living hostages...

[Medulla Oblongata]

During Monday’s episode of The View, co-host Ana Navarro launched what can only be described as an evidence-free tirade about President Donald Trump and the Super Bowl halftime show. Here’s the kicker – she proudly admitted she hadn’t even watched the game.

“I wasn’t watching the game, but listen, I think today Donald Trump is going to sign an executive order banning Black people from halftime, because you remember last week we were talking about whether the NFL was capitulating to Trump by removing the term, ‘End Racism’ from the end zone? Boy, did they not capitulate to Trump,” Navarro said.

And that’s what advanced Trump derangement syndrome looks like, folks.

https://pjnewsletter.com/ana-navarro-trump-ban

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

I think today Donald Trump is going to sign an executive order banning Black people from halftime

Buttplug would be so torn.

[Marshal]

The key to surviving long as a left wing hysteria-monger is making unfalsifiable predictions. I don't think Ana's going to be around long.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

But she's a conservative like sarc was.

[Marshal]

Exactly like sarc was.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

I used to say "Pray for a TDS vaccine" but even if there is still time to save people, the current hysteria is too fun to give up watching.

[Marshal]

Maybe we'll give it to them in a few years.

[Michael Ejercito]

How does TDS cause people to sound more unhinged than the Westboro Baptist Church?

[Marshal]

My theory is that WBC knows they're only doing it for the money so that takes the emotionalism out. In contrast and by design left-wingers form their self-worth around their politics. This drives up each acolyte's enthusiasm to 11.

The left wants this because it makes them absolutely reliable supporters, but it does limit their effectiveness. That's why they are are trained out of it as they rise through the organizations.

[soldiermedic76]

Because WBC we recognize as a cult, while progressivism is a cult that very few call a cult.

[Medulla Oblongata]

In four more years--possibly less?--Trump will be gone, and we'll be on to the next literally Hitler Republican. Hopefully people will remember how the fascist and literally Hitler played out this time and laugh in their faces.

[soldiermedic76]

They crossed that Rubicon when they labeled Romney Hitler. That's why it failed in 2016 and 2024.

[Super Scary]

" I think today Donald Trump is going to sign an executive order banning Black people from halftime"

It would be an interesting world if Trump was 5% as evil as these people imagine him to be.

[Medulla Oblongata]

Projection. Virtually everything the left denounces is simply an admission of things they are currently doing but that they don't want the other side to do.

[lwt1960]

Bureaucracy cutting by the numbers: Liz, how do you make a statement like this "The federal government has historically been quite bad at tracking data that Americans need access to" and not comment the Federal government has no business tracking such data, especially as it relates to education? Privatize the system, create competition and the schools and districts will have to publicize their data to attract customers. Kinda like in a free market?

[Medulla Oblongata]

Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman (D-PA):

"I think their primary currency was shaming and scolding and talking down to people and telling them ‘Hey, I know better than you, or you’re dopes, or you’re a bro, or you’re ignorant or, how can you be this dumb? I can’t imagine it. And then, by the way, they’re fascists. How can you vote for that?'”

“I know and I love people that voted for Trump, and they’re not fascist,”

“They don’t support insurrection and those things. And if you go to an extreme, and you become a boutique kind of proposition, then you’re going to lose the argument.”

[SRG2]

Seems like a reasonable analysis

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Like I've said, this guy is talking like a person who's positioning himself to run for President in 2028, and he's going to be a formidable candidate if that happens specifically because he knows how to read a room while advancing his party's agenda.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

He did a great job on Rogan.

He faltered a little when backing some of the more insane ideas of his party, but otherwise he was excellent.
And I don't mean that he is an excellent politician, but rather that he had the ability to come across like a decent human being, and a nice humble guy.

[MasterThief]

I saw 2 versions of him in that interview. There was the reasonable person and there was the partisan democrat politician. I appreciate many of the things he says, but where it matters his voting record shows him to be a partisan.
On a side note, he is far from recovered from the stroke. I mostly succeeded in not holding the cognitive issues against him but still came away from it feeling he shouldn't hold power.

[Marshal]

Apparently it takes a stroke to break the Dem mind-meld their activists submit to.

[Medulla Oblongata]

Judge Who Blocked Trump's Funding Freeze...videos

https://x.com/nataliegwinters/status/1889510506366378394

Judge John McConnell Jr. says as a "middle class, white male privileged person" he needs to "understand" criminals who are "women, black, or transgender" and that the "law applies to them where they are."

Judge McConnell equates President Trump's first four years to the damage inflicted by the Civil War and Jim Crow laws.

He also compares President Trump a "tyrant."

Judge McConnell insists that it's okay for judges to let personal opinions influence their decisions.

"I have opinions about a lot of things..."

(He was on the Finance Committee for a Hillary Clinton Campaign, 6-figure dem donor, and Planned Parenthood Board member.)

Judge McConnell also established a Diversity, Inclusion, and Racial Justice Committee in his court.

He insists that "racism is a white people problem" and that white people need to "figure it out" and do the "hard work" to fix it.

Judge McConnell then lamented that his Court was a bad example because it was "too white."

He admits to exclusively hiring black people solely because they were "people of color."

Judge McConnell also claims that "we all have racism inside of us."

Natalie Winters
@nataliegwinters
·
Feb 11
This is an activist.

Not a judge.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

First Circuit in Boston made up of all Democrats

[MasterThief]

He sounds like Matt Walsh's parody character from Am I Racist

[Super Scary]

"Judge McConnell also claims that "we all have racism inside of us.""

We all have it, but it's a white person problem? I'll never understand self-hating whites like this guy.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

Well, he's not actually self-hating. Establishment elites use language like that for several reasons.

The first one is a social identifier. It's their way of signaling to others in their class that they are one of them.

The second reason is because it's the way they engage in class warfare. The biggest threat to the establishment's hegemony are the rank and file Americans who think that the citizenry is the boss. So they try to smear them as bigots, bitter clingers, deplorables, and stir up racial dissention. Anything to weaken the workers and the middle class.

The third Reason is because it's how they control each other. They don't want a Trump or Brothers Gracchi.

The forth is because they’re terrible, awful, evil people who are using injustice as an excuse to indulge their garbage natures.

[lwt1960]

Fed Watchdogs- At least they didn't argue the efficacy of the efforts. If they truly did their jobs, DOGE wouldn't exist and they'd be heroes for calling out all the corruption and waste. Instead, they're just another group of protected employees trying to fly under the radar. This group is among the most insidious, as it gives the public a false sense of security they're actually accomplishing something. What could be better than a "wathdog"? What could be worse than that same watchdog willfully or ignorantly failing to safeguard their domain?

[SRG2]

Cutting bureaucracy is good, though whether a chainsaw is an intelligent way to proceed is a separate matter.

I agree that there's no Constitutional crisis - but if Trusk loses at the SC and then disobeys their decision, there would be, and there is little likelihood that Congress would act. It's also possible that the same 6 justices in the majority in Loper Bright will find that deferring to broad Executive interpretation is ok when the president does it, and they may have one eye on the possible consequences of ruling against Trusk, the law be damned.

But it is a fucking disgrace that Габбард is DNI - she wouldn't get clearance for any lower position, she is so pro-Putin that it's legitimate to wonder whether she's an actual asset - or whether Putin requested that Trump nominate her, and the GOP senators have betrayed the US by approving her. The US would be more secure if she were terminated. From her post or existence, I leave to you to decide.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

I've decided you're full of shit.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

Did you notice that the fifty-centing Nazi invoked Chuck Schumer from a few days ago?

Diet Shrike today: "Cutting bureaucracy is good, though whether a chainsaw is an intelligent way to proceed is a separate matter"

Chuck Schumer on Tuesday: "“everyone knows there's waste in government that should be cut, but DOGE is using a meat axe"

And you just know it's an emailed talking point because it is so inane.

[SRG2]

I hadn't seen Schumer's comment but unlike you I'm capable of independent thought. It's merely an obvious metaphor - though I said chainsaw while Schumer said meat axe.

1. Do you agree that there is government waste? Yes. So you agree with me here.

2. If you think that the cuts in government are ill-considered and unnecessarily sweeping, what metaphor would you use? Chainsaw, cudgel, meat axe, etc. These are all obvious. Now had I actually said meat axe, which is far less obvious than chain saw, you might have had a point. But I didn't so you don't.

Now fuck off, you execrable piece of authoritarian shit.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

"But it is a fucking disgrace that Габбард"

Gosh. What are you trying to say here, Diet Shrike?

You knew that outright repeating your master's "Russian spy" smear here would make you look stupid, so you thought you'd try and be tricky?

[SRG2]

I have no master.

Габбард is obviously pro-Putin. And Trump is obviously pro-Putin.

Габбард lacks the qualifications to be DNI and her pro-Syria/Putin stance should lead us to question her nomination at the very least. And if you cannot see how deferential Trump has been to Putin, you're truly a cultist fuckwit.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Габбард is obviously pro-Putin. And Trump is obviously pro-Putin.

And you're obviously begging the question. It's why your side has been pushing the "Russia" lie since 2016, which was completely cooked up by Hillary in the first place.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

How is she and Trump pro-Putin?

I think you're trying to pull two tricks here. First, because both she and Trump don't want to start a money-laundering war over the Ukraine, you and you're DNC bosses are trying to slime them as pro-Putin.
Second, you and your DNC bosses just can't let go of the completely debunked "Trump is a Russian spy" smear propaganda exercise that served you so well eight years ago, you will still try to flex it whenever you can.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Lol. Shrike will never give up Russiagate.

[DesigNate]

You were all over her clit until she decided that Trump wasn’t actually Satan and Hitler’s love child.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Cutting bureaucracy is good, though whether a chainsaw is an intelligent way to proceed is a separate matter.

No, it's really not. A chainsaw is the only way to actually get modern bureaucracies cut in any substantive way.

But it is a fucking disgrace that Габбард is DNI - she wouldn't get clearance for any lower position

You really don't know how security clearances work, do you? The tired left-wing "Russian asset" deep state lie gives you away there.

From her post or existence, I leave to you to decide.

The gene pool would certainly be improved if you got the Full Joseph Rosenbaum.

[SRG2]

You really don't know how security clearances work,

I know that the president can bypass any clearance system as he did with Ivanka and Jared. Why do you think Tulsi would have passed?

And I also know that the WH circumvented background checks for her and others.

Don't you think that conducting a proper background check is appropriate for the DNI? (Cue "but I don't trust the gubmint not to undermine Trump's selections" defence to no checks.)

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

I know that the president can bypass any clearance system as he did with Ivanka and Jared. Why do you think Tulsi would have passed?

LOL, you're still not demonstrating you know how security clearances work, you waste of carbon molecules.

And I also know that the WH circumvented background checks for her and others.

She'd already had one as a Reserve military member, you fork-tongued shithead.

Don't you think that conducting a proper background check is appropriate for the DNI? (Cue "but I don't trust the gubmint not to undermine Trump's selections" defence to no checks.)

A proper background check was done. That you don't like the outcome doesn't mean it wasn't proper.

[SRG2]

you're still not demonstrating you know how security clearances work, you waste of carbon molecules.

Hey, cunt, you've not shown I was wrong about the president bypassing the process. The fact that you're not actually able to show I'm wrong is of course a concession that I'm right.

She'd already had one as a Reserve military member,

But not to the same level as the DNI would require, hence showing that you don't know as much about clearances as you claim,

A proper background check was done. That you don't like the outcome doesn't mean it wasn't proper.

And not disclosed to the Senate.

You give a great impression of being the smegma on Trump's dick.

[SRG2]

No, it's really not. A chainsaw is the only way to actually get modern bureaucracies cut in any substantive way

A version of "Ready, Fire, Aim!" Some time spend analysing which parts need to be cut, which are necessary, which have dependencies so cutting them will have downstream effects, etc. All required before the chainsaw. Your attitude is like someone told he needs to lose 50 lbs, cutting his legs off.

[Don't look at me! (No longer muted!)]

It’s too late to dilly dally. We are out of fucking time and money.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Some time spend analysing which parts need to be cut, which are necessary, which have dependencies so cutting them will have downstream effects, etc.

Nope. That provides the bureaucrats time to delay and entrench. Better to blow them out right from the start.

All required before the chainsaw.

We're not cutting down a tree, we're massacing bureaucracies. No analysis required.

There's a reason "fuck you, cut spending" became a meme here.

Your attitude is like someone told he needs to lose 50 lbs, cutting his legs off.

My attitude is based on 100 years of liberal government history. Your analogy is as shit as the rest of your arguments.

[Medulla Oblongata]

Perhaps Trump and team were planning what they would cut and who they would fire for months? At least since Nov.?

Trump has been there before, he knows where some of the bodies were buried, and just needed the keys to the car. It's not like he woke up this morning and threw darts at a board to decide who gets fired.

[Medulla Oblongata]

I saw this magazine cover back in the day, and thought "How could the editor put *that* blurb on the cover with *that* photo.

https://i.huffpost.com/gen/2151688/thumbs/o-MENS-HEALTH-570.jpg?6

"Lose 30,50,90 Pounds"

Double amputee veteran as the cover photo

[Its_Not_Inevitable]

LOL

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

You remain uneducated and partisan shrike.

[soldiermedic76]

^This is why we call you leftist.

[Weigel's Cock Ring]

"The House budget would allow about $4 trillion more debt through 2034, with interest. That makes our debt problem about 50% worse"

Elon desperately needs to get "Big Balls" and the rest of his team of data analysts access to this C.R. as soon as possible so that they can start crossing shit out left and right.

And then Trump needs to have a one-on-one "come to Jesus" sit-down meeting with Mike Johnson and tell that pussy that if he doesn't play ball he'll be thrown into a woodchipper.

[Medulla Oblongata]

100% agree.

[Bananas]

Thanks for that breakdown of cuts, Good Liz.
Nice start for only being 3 weeks in.

[Uncle Jay]

The "war on bureaucracy" is justified.
For too many decades, the American taxpayers have paid for federal bureaucrats' salaries, benefits, retirement, etc.
The time to eliminate about 90% of the federal bureaucracy is long overdue especially when computers and AI can do a better job much quicker.