Blah blah blah 2 [Archive] - Striper Talk Striped Bass Fishing, Surfcasting, Boating

Pete F.

02-06-2025, 11:10 AM

This is an elaboration on the YouTube video I posted yesterday

MEMORANDUM
Date: February 5, 2025
Subject: Capture of U.S. Critical Infrastructure by Neoreactionaries
Executive Summary
Following President Trump’s Executive Order establishing the Department of Government Eﬃciency (DOGE), many
have been shocked by the speed and scope of changes led by Elon Musk. While DOGE in theory aligns with
longstanding conservative ambitions, the reality is that Musk has not limited government or dismantled the deep
state; he has replaced it with himself. Under his radical restructuring of federal power, the White House is at risk of
becoming captive to Musk’s demands. This memo outlines four alarming developments that transcend
partisanship.
I. II. III. IV. Musk-aligned operatives have seized control of the Oﬃce of Personnel Management (OPM),
purging career civil servants and installing loyalists with ties to Musk’s private ventures.
DOGE has deployed unvetted hires—many under 25 years old—who now wield de facto
control over sensitive government functions without security clearances. These individuals,
drawn from Musk’s orbit and Silicon Valley’s neo-reactionary (NRx) network, operate without legal
oversight or accountability.
DOGE has gained read-write access over Treasury pipes and federal payment systems,
granting Musk direct influence over the financial infrastructure of the U.S. government. This
unprecedented control over money flows creates a national security risk and a personal power
lever for Musk.
The congressionally mandated divestment of TikTok has been delayed, with reported
Chinese interest in Musk as a buyer. If successful, Musk would control not just X (formerly
Twitter) but also the largest platform shaping youth political discourse—further concentrating his
influence over public opinion.
Rather than operating as an ally of the Trump administration, Musk has hijacked its ambitions for his own purposes.
His rapid takeover of federal infrastructure mirrors the broader ambitions of the neoreactionary (NRx) movement—a
small group of Silicon Valley elites who reject democracy and seek to install a "CEO Monarch" to rule by
technological and financial dominance. This network includes Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Balaji Srinivasan, David
Sacks, and Curtis Yarvin, among others. Once considered fringe, purveyors of this ideology have now been
embedded into the core of government operations.
Musk’s maneuvering demonstrates a long-standing strategy of this elite class: not dismantling government, but
replacing its power structures with ones they control. DOGE has not reduced bureaucracy—it has privatized it.
Treasury has not been made more eﬃcient—it has been placed under a billionaire’s influence. TikTok has not been
secured from foreign threats—it has been delayed so Musk can position himself as its gatekeeper. President Trump,
far from asserting dominance over the administrative state, may now find himself hostage to Musk.
Congress Must Act to Prevent Private Takeover of Government. This memo calls for immediate congressional
action to reassert democratic control and prevent Musk’s further entrenchment into government infrastructure
including launching urgent investigations into DOGE’s hiring practices, Treasury access, and OPM purges;
strengthening security and conflicts-of-interest laws; enforcing divestment measures; barring Musk from
acquiring TikTok; and limiting Musk’s influence over national security and diplomatic aﬀairs.
The scale, speed, and opacity of Musk’s actions demand urgent scrutiny—not just as a policy concern, but as a
direct challenge to the constitutional order and the President’s independence. If left unchecked, Musk’s
consolidation of power will shift control over critical U.S. infrastructure away from accountable governance and into
the hands of a single private actor, setting a dangerous precedent for the future of American democracy. Congress must act now to prevent a hostile private takeover of public power.
https://america2.news/content/files/2025/02/Musk-NRx-Memo-February-5-2025.pdf
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spence

02-06-2025, 01:25 PM

God, the connection of outside hardware to secure government systems, shadow teams likely still on their parent’s insurance with hidden identities, CIA employee names being sent via regular email…and now it looks like Musk may be uploading the confidential information of millions of Americans to the Cloud to run AI???

John’s head must be ready to pop. This is so insanely bad.

It really seems like Musk sold a trump a fantasy of eliminating a million government jobs with AI. This will either fall apart or go very, very, very badly.

Pete F.

02-06-2025, 09:29 PM

Rmarsh

02-07-2025, 02:28 AM

We’re at the very, very, very bad spot.
The Trump Musk administration is currently under a court order to not do several things that violate the law, if they violate the court order in normal times, the judge asks a US Marshal to go pick them up.
That Marshall works for Trump.
I don’t see a good outcome, even if the Republicans in Congress wake up, they and the Supreme Court have given the Felon absolute power.
This won’t take a long time to play out
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So what. Nothing you or the rest of you TDS suckers can do about it. Is there?
Cry some more...that's about it.
I've heard some dems are suggesting taking the fight to the streets.:rotf3:
He's going to proclaim that he is supreme leader soon :conf:..... according to an anonymous source..... so you had better get the hell going.

Pete F.

02-07-2025, 08:27 AM

So what. Nothing you or the rest of you TDS suckers can do about it. Is there?
Cry some more...that's about it.
I've heard some dems are suggesting taking the fight to the streets.:rotf3:
He's going to proclaim that he is supreme leader soon :conf:..... according to an anonymous source..... so you had better get the hell going.
You seem to be very happy that the grand experiment is ending after…almost 250 years.
Trump has no interest in upholding the law or protecting and preserving the Constitution. According to him and your ilk, the law is whatever he says it is. So, are we a nation of laws? Do we care about the Constitution? Or are you good with terminating it?
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Got Stripers

02-07-2025, 08:30 AM

All but one discussing policy changes, non vetted individuals accessing sensitive information with national security implications, global aid assistance to avoid another pandemic, a decades old mild east hot spot and this one individual just rants about the liberal left. Paints a pretty sad picture of this guy, we discuss policy, policy, policy and he answers hate, hate, hate. A Trump mini me, vengeance, hate and name calling, adults by age but more child like in demeanor.

Pete F.

02-07-2025, 08:42 AM

Small majorities in many regions prefer facts over bizarre conspiracy, democracy over authoritarianism and American pluralism over racism and xenophobia. In other Western democracies, far-right extremists win seats in national assemblies, where coalitions can constrain their ideas. But in a two-party system, the capture of one party by extremists is enough to cause great political havoc and violence - a lesson we should have learned from the destruction of our Union in 1861.
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PaulS

02-07-2025, 02:10 PM

Killing off USAID... there goes a huge amount of our global influence, particularly in Africa, which will open the door to China there even further. So much for the compassionate conservatism of GWB....

Always said that was a oxymoron.

wdmso

02-07-2025, 02:48 PM

From JD Vance. Our vice president. Reguarding the firing of a Doge member for racist posts. Such as I was a racist before it was cool. And something to the effect they should kill all the Jews and the Palestinians.

Here’s my view: JD Vance tweet.

I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life.

We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever.

So I say bring him back.

If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that.

So DEI for racists white guys is ok. got it. .. and blame the journalist for trying tying to ruin his life. .. rmarsh. Keep convincing yourself they don’t and are not acting like. Nazis….

Pete F.

02-07-2025, 03:43 PM

Musk’s DOGE Teen Was Fired By Cybersecurity Firm for Leaking Company Secrets

Edward Coristine posted online that he had retained access to the firm’s servers. Now he has access to sensitive government information.
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wdmso

02-07-2025, 04:28 PM

Trump DEI crackdown targets books in Pentagon schools As the DEI purge widens, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered restrictions on what books DOD schools can teach, according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post.

And Pete was handed this Memo. direction from who? We know it’s not trumps idea.

DEI is to Republicans as Jews were to the Nazi Party. Scapegoats

Pete F.

02-07-2025, 07:18 PM

No conflicts with FElon

Exclusive: President Trump's nominee as Air Force Secretary, currently a top official at the national spy satellite agency, arranged a multibillion-dollar contract solicitation in a way that favored Elon Musk's SpaceX, according to seven people familiar with the contract reut.rs/4b7MUKt
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Rmarsh

02-08-2025, 03:24 AM

From JD Vance. Our vice president. Reguarding the firing of a Doge member for racist posts. Such as I was a racist before it was cool. And something to the effect they should kill all the Jews and the Palestinians.

So DEI for racists white guys is ok. got it. .. and blame the journalist for trying tying to ruin his life. .. rmarsh. Keep convincing yourself they don’t and are not acting like. Nazis….

^^^^^^These low IQ references to nazis, hitler, ss, etc. are what the American people rejected, and helped Trump win. Good job.
I understand it can be difficult for those whose intelligence abruptly stopped growing at age 15.
This support group was set up for just that purpose.

Pete F.

02-08-2025, 08:46 AM

wdmso

02-08-2025, 09:12 AM

^^^^^^These low IQ references to nazis, hitler, ss, etc. are what the American people rejected, and helped Trump win. Good job.
I understand it can be difficult for those whose intelligence abruptly stopped growing at age 15.
This support group was set up for just that purpose.

I understand it can be difficult for those whose intelligence abruptly stopped growing at age 15.

I didn’t ask about you? Or your issues But it makes sense since you mentioned it…. Your brain is not so different from the material you work with

Cut to length dense and takes a nail and hammer for it to work … your issue is you only use one type of nail …. Insults ya know the kind only a 15 years old would use. :buds:

And let’s be Clear RMARSH. The difference between us is clear

I love our country and thats why I despise Trumps action in 2016 and now.

Yet You Love Trump the Man. 1st and country 2nd. And how do we know this. Because all you do his defend HIM…. You have Never defend the constitution or the rule of law.
Even these you’ve attacked in defense of your dear Leader Trump

Pete F.

02-08-2025, 10:03 AM

Poor suffering billionaires

Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3 Billion in Income
This brings Tesla’s average tax rate over the past three years to 0.4 percent.
https://truthout.org/articles/tesla-paid-zero-federal-income-tax-in-2024-despite-2-3-billion-in-income/
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Pete F.

02-08-2025, 10:26 AM

NEWS ANALYSIS: White Nationalist Forces Consolidate Power Alongside Musk’s Junta
By William Boot
Two weeks into a fast-moving coup by a South African tech oligarch, the United States — which was already deep into planning for its 250th birthday next year — hangs suspended this weekend in a liminal state somewhere between the constitutional republic it has been for 249 years and an authoritarian regime akin to Europe’s infamous fallen democracy, Hungary.
Following the alarming purges of the security services last week and the successful capture of the national treasury and other federal agencies by technical junta forces loyal to centibillionaire Elon Musk, the country’s constitutional system seemed to awaken from slumber this week.
Although by Monday Musk reigned unquestioned as head of the government, he appears content to allow the country’s elected president, Donald Trump, to remain the ceremonial head of state, and overall the political situation seemed to stabilize as the week progressed. Amid widening protests by opposition leaders and the public, damning media reports, and a flurry of court orders that blocked or slowed some of the most controversial power grabs, the country even appeared — at least temporarily — to pull back from the abyss.
Nevertheless, tensions remained high on the streets of the federal district known as Washington and uncertainty filled governmental offices.
The capital’s limbo status was reflected in a bizarre power sharing arrangement—some agencies were directly controlled by Musk, while others remained led by ideologically aligned ministers appointed by the figurehead Trump. Many of those officials who support Musk’s white nationalist agenda went out of their way to pay homage to the oligarch. The transportation minister bragged publicly about inviting a Musk takeover of his ministry’s work on aviation safety, and the capital’s federal prosecutor posted a letter to social media putting his supposedly independent force at Musk’s disposal.
The small handful of correspondents whose news organizations have not been cowed into compliance by regime threats spent much of the week in the embattled capital trying to even identify the mysterious Musk-backed figures taking control of government systems. Many of the junta gang members, who would only identify themselves by first-names and were known locally as DOGE, adopted a standard uniform of t-shirts under blazers and appeared to be youths, some even in their teens — one went online by the moniker BigBalls.
Many of these child foot soldiers were apparently mercenaries pulled from the sprawling business empire run by Musk, himself a notoriously immature and boyish oligarch raised amid wealth and privilege in apartheid-era South Africa who has steadily built deep ties to far-right political movements around the globe in recent years.
Regime spokespeople refused to clarify for much of the week whether the DOGE operators deployed across Washington were officially employed by the government or just acting at the personal order of Musk.
Throughout the week, reports and rumors of surprise DOGE appearances at one government office or another spread like wildfire on social media and over text-messaging chains filled with nervous government employees. Members of the parliament’s opposition party tried to investigate some of the agencies under siege, but were blocked from even entering buildings occupied by DOGE forces; at the education ministry, for instance, they faced down an anonymous brown-shirted enforcer who refused to identify himself.
At Parliament, members of the loyalist faction spent day after day pretending to not notice that Musk’s junta was undermining laws and blocking critical federal funding that they had settled on and approved themselves just months ago. One loyalist senator went so far as to say that “nobody should bellyache” about the unconstitutional and extra-legal moves by Musk.
Beyond the DOGE forces directly controlled by Musk’s junta, Christian white nationalists aligned with Musk solidified their control on other government institutions throughout the week, seeking to restore the primacy of the white male ruling class that has held power since the country’s founding and undermine the recent progress toward equality and professional advancements made by women and the country’s long oppressed racial and ethnic minorities.
After twenty members of the Democratic opposition party held an all-night protest, loyalist Republicans who control the Senate body approved a self-described Christian nationalist to head the country’s budget office. That official wrote in 2021 that he “recognizes America as a Christian nation, where our rights and duties are understood to come from God and where our primary responsibilities as citizens are for building and preserving the strength, prosperity and health of our own country.”
In her first communications as the country’s top law enforcement officer — a post known as attorney general — Pam Bondi acted quickly to criminalize both private sector and educational programs that aimed to help hire, educate, or support minority workers. On Thursday, the government also issued a new presidential order officially favoring Christians, a policy that almost certainly violates the country’s longstanding constitutional freedom of religion and separation of church and state.
The military — now overseen by a TV host-turned-defense-minister who has tribal tattoo markings that celebrate the Christian Crusades and are commonly associated with white nationalist groups — canceled programs that support minority or women personnel, saying that he believed helping non-white men succeed and thrive was “incompatible” with military values. The defense minister’s sweeping decrees even “paused” trainings aimed at combating sexual assault and harassment, led museum officials to cover up pictures honoring women who had served the nation’s intelligence services, and the Air Force to stop teaching history about Black men who served heroically in World War II.
The country’s oldest military academy — a school known as West Point that has served for centuries as a treasured training ground for the nation’s soldiers and business elite alike — disbanded longstanding student groups for Black, Hispanic, Japanese, Korean, and indigenous students, as well as a society for women engineers, but notably preserved student groups made up of religious denominations popular with the country’s white majority.
It was clear the assault on women and minorities in the military came from the top down: In his first hours as president, Trump had fired the national coast guard commandant, the first woman ever to lead a branch of the military, and on Tuesday he capriciously ordered her to give up her government housing with just three hours notice.
The combination of actions by various federal leaders, including Bondi — whose justice ministry leadership has quickly undone decades of traditional independence and is instead primarily made up of Trump’s personal lawyers who successfully stymied last year the then-former president’s prosecution on 94 felony criminal charges stemming from four criminal cases — seems focused on turning the clock back to one of the country’s darkest historical chapters, known as Jim Crow, when it strictly enforced racial segregation laws, particularly in economically depressed southern regions that had until the middle of the 19th century legalized the enslavement of Black people.
In fact, naked racism and support for white supremacy seemed one of the defining attributes of staffers across the new government. At least three of the DOGE mercenaries, when identified, were quickly traced to racist or extremist postings online; one of them, who had advocated for eugenics and called to “normalize” hating Indians, resigned, only to be quickly reinstated by Musk with support from the vice president. (“Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool,” a social media account linked to the staff posted last July.) Similarly, a man appointed to be the nation’s top public diplomat had been previously fired from a government role for attending a gathering of white nationalists and had called the nation’s Black population “feral” and advocated sterilizing Black men by incentivizing them with fancy sneakers.
As if to underscore the new ties between apartheid-era South Africa, the regime — which spent much of first two weeks brutally cracking down on non-white refugees — moved in recent days to explicitly welcome new white Afrikaner refugees.
It is perhaps not surprising, in retrospect, that the United States government might be overthrown by such a radical, youthful, tech-enabled junta.
Throughout the governmental upheaval, there have been consistent warning signs of the country’s creaking gerontocracy and an aging, increasingly out-of-touch generation unwilling to cede power peacefully — after all, three of the country’s last five presidents have all been born in 1946 and the just-departed president, who was forced to drop out of his reelection bid after appearing unable to answer questions during a televised debate last June, was even older.
Attorney General Bondi’s confirmation hearing was overseen by a 91-year-old senator who could barely string together coherent sentences and the body’s longtime Republican leader, now 82 and who repeatedly froze in public appearances last year, fell down twice in the Capitol building on Wednesday and was spotted thereafter using a wheelchair.
Most of all, though, that gerontocracy seemed on full display in the presidential mansion. There, the seemingly senile elected president, mid-level oligarch Donald Trump — reduced apparently without public complaint by Musk’s coup to a ceremonial figurehead — continued his practice of issuing bizarre and impractical daily announcements aimed primarily at attracting media headlines, each almost less sensical than the last. There was little evidence he was aware of the broader actions taking place across his government and no sense he was in control of the capital.
Over last weekend, the president — a failed real estate developer who remade his public image in the early 2000s as a hardened business executive through a popular reality TV show and who makes a habit of announcing that he’s solved crises that he invented himself — initiated a bizarre and ill-planned trade war with the country’s two main trading partners, only to rescind the threatened tariffs on Monday and Tuesday after the leaders of both countries placated him by announcing things they’d already been doing.
Later on Tuesday, he announced — with no official plan or even reasonable hope of execution — that the US would take over Gaza and develop it into golf courses; he devoted Thursday to an intensely personally attack on what amounts to just ten transgender college athletes nationwide, out of some 500,000 student athletes, the latest in a long series of actions aimed at inciting a moral panic over a tiny minority of an already heavily persecuted population; to cap off the week Friday evening, in a move more likely historically to emanate from Turkmenistan than the United States, he declared himself the chairman of the capital’s main arts institution, known as the Kennedy Center.
Then, for the third time in as many weekends of his presidency, he headed south to his personal beach compound located in Florida, a southern province known as a political stronghold and led by a loyalist governor. Presumably, this weekend — like the others so far — he’ll go golfing and then on Sunday, he is scheduled to attend the nation’s biggest secular holiday festival, an American football game called the “Super Bowl.”
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Got Stripers

02-08-2025, 10:45 AM

You seem to be very happy that the grand experiment is ending after…almost 250 years.
Trump shows no interest in upholding the law or protecting and preserving the Constitution. According to him and your ilk, the law is whatever he says it is.
So, are we a nation of laws?
Do we care about the Constitution? Or are you good with terminating it?
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Best not the argue with a cult member, you will only get more of the same, he is a Trump mini me, angry, racist, narcissistic, never wrong, never willing to intelligently debate the policy issues, he knows it all, but clearly knows little and is ready to welcome a country ruled by the rich few funded on the backs of the poor and middle class.

piemma

02-08-2025, 01:33 PM

OH BOY!!! You guys need to fish.

Pete F.

02-08-2025, 02:18 PM

OH BOY!!! You guys need to fish.

Or play golf

Both are frozen up here
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Pete F.

02-08-2025, 02:25 PM

wdmso

02-08-2025, 02:42 PM

This is how MAGA logic works

They can round people up
They can put them in camps
They can villainized them
They can separate children
They can deport people to unsafe and other dictators
They can use them as scapegoats for the nation’s problems

But you can’t compare them to 1930 or 1940 Germany

Even if 99% of their rhetoric behaviors and actions mirror what happened in Germany

And their defense …. Is. Well we haven’t gassed them or killed them ….. AND AM I SUPPOSED TO PAT THEM ON THEIR BACKS FOR STOPPING THERE?

It’s like claiming not to be a rapist because you didn’t stick it in him or her

spence

02-08-2025, 03:00 PM

FElon wants to frame the NIH indirects cut as $4B in savings.

But given that NIH returns $2.5 on every $1 investment, this would actually cost US economy a net $6 BILLION (per year!). Not to mention the human costs of wrecking education and research sectors and the communities they serve.
Bu bu but…
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It’s just an attack on woke universities.

Nearly all of these “cuts” are politically driven with zero thought into the negative ramifications.

Musk thinks he can replace most of the government with an AI bot and eliminate all the pesky regulations impacting his businesses.

When the working class wakes up to what’s really going on it’s going to be ugly.

Got Stripers

02-08-2025, 03:36 PM

When the working class wakes up to what’s really going on it’s going to be ugly.

I really think one big problem is the young are more interested in their social media feeds and are either tuned out to what is happening, or believing all the spin those working this coup are putting on their phones. If and when the massive marches and demonstrations begin, I hope the military aren’t going to blindly follow orders if those orders means silencing free speech by force. Wait until the job market that clearly shows what Trump and Musk are up to tanks, hope you are too heavily invested in the stock market.

Pete F.

02-08-2025, 05:36 PM

And just like that, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau homepage, consumerfinance.gov, is being erased. As of January 30, 2025, CFPB enforcement actions resulted in
$19.7 billion in consumer relief.

The budget for 2025 for CFPB is $823 million. Since its creation in 2011, the CFPB has returned $20.7 billion to consumers

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Got Stripers

02-08-2025, 05:51 PM

Nothing to see here you crazy liberal, until dawn breaks over all the marbleheads.

wdmso

02-09-2025, 09:24 AM

So let me understand what Trump and Republicans claim is happening with Musk and Trump

They all claim Trump has won an Historic mandate. And his is doing what Americans elected him to do…

We all a know the mandate line is a lie.

But can Republicans or supporters explain why Trump with such a mandate In control of the presidency the House and the Senate

Be so weak. That their entire agenda is based on executive actions!

You know the ones republicans claimed and I quote

Burgum, a Trump ally who has been floated as his potential running mate, responded: "We've got three branches of government and this president, more like any other, has bypassed Congress.

As recently as October, now-President Biden said you can’t legislate by executive action unless you’re a dictator. Well, in one week, he’s signed more than 30 unilateral actions, and working Americans are getting short shrift,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

Or. The party of voter ID was against

Republicans and conservative activists have increasingly been targeting an executive order issued three years ago by the Biden administration that is intended to boost voter registration, claiming it’s unconstitutional and an attempt to interfere in the November election.

Anyone else see a pattern .. republican terms an EO by definition from a democratic is evil and is circumventing the roll of congress and the constitution! Yet an EO by Trump is leadership with no mention of the role of congress or the constitution…. Is the word mandate in the constitution?

Got Stripers

02-09-2025, 09:54 AM

Everyone was warned and those that helped put him in office wanted this apparently, or just assumed it was all talk. Trump and Musk are exposed for exactly who they are, Americans and true conservative patriotic republicans better wake up soon or it will be to late. Another perfect example of who he is was shown in his shameful tweet about why the department of education is being scrapped, don’t want ugly teachers in the schools.

Pete F.

02-09-2025, 10:27 AM

JD Vance 2022 in case you had any doubt why the FFOTUS picked him

He said he thought this was pessimistic. "I tend to think that we should seize the institutions of the left," he said. "And turn them against the left.
We need like a de-Baathification program, a de-woke-ification program."
"I think Trump is going to run again in 2024," he said. "I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people."
"And when the courts stop you," he went on, "stand before the country, and say—" he quoted Andrew Jackson, giving a challenge to the entire constitutional order-"the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it."
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Pete F.

02-09-2025, 10:48 AM

I would say they’re writing the Democrats campaign but I think they’ve convinced MAGA that bureaucrats have magical powers.
There’s a reason the President is Article 2 in the Constitution.

BASH: I remember a time when Republicans were very careful about the government having access to personal data

NOEM: Well, we can't trust the government anymore

BASH: You are the government
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wdmso

02-09-2025, 12:42 PM

Trump keeps yelling waste fraud and abuse. And corruption

Yet since . As of February 9th. of this year he's visited Mar-A-Lago more times. Than the WH. His supporters don't seem to care, apparently enriching himself by playing at his own properties and charging the Secret Service up to $650 a day to stay at those properties

Same as last time :btu:

Nebe

02-09-2025, 12:44 PM

Its A CULT
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Got Stripers

02-09-2025, 01:04 PM

Pete F.

02-09-2025, 02:13 PM

Apparently FElon has spent millions for a propaganda add about USAID during the superbowl
Here’s a little video to get out in front of his lies
https://vimeo.com/1052680025
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wdmso

02-09-2025, 02:22 PM

Candidates for top intelligence and law enforcement jobs were asked to give “yes” or “no” responses to questions such as: Was Jan. 6 “an inside job?”

That’s funny not one of Trump nominees. Would answer hypothetical questions,

More loyalty less competency. What could go wrong

wdmso

02-09-2025, 02:36 PM

I did not write this but it makes an earlier comment I made .. better

I. believe our current administration is fascist. Not because I dislike them or because I can’t get over an election, but because I've spent too many years reading and learning about the Third Reich to miss the similarities. Not because any administration I dislike must be Nazis, but because things are actually mirroring authoritarian and fascist regimes of the past.

Pete F.

02-09-2025, 03:51 PM

I think either his good friends are paying him or he’s just a moron. Both have the same result.

Trump: "I'm gonna tell Elon very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education. He's gonna find the same thing. Then I'm gonna go to the military. Let's check the military. We're gonna find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse."
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Pete F.

02-09-2025, 07:37 PM

Mark Cuban moments ago:
"If you have nothing to hide, hide nothing. Elon Musk, why not invite some democrats to work side by side with your Doge teams and report on what exactly is going on?"

He’s right, there’s no proprietary software or information involved.
Shouldn’t need anymore clearance than the people already involved
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wdmso

02-09-2025, 10:05 PM

Over the past 24 hours, officials ranging from billionaire Elon Musk to Vice President JD Vance have not only criticized a federal judge's decision early Saturday that blocks Musk's Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Treasury Department records, but have also attacked the legitimacy of judicial oversight, a fundamental pillar of American democracy, which is based on the separation of powers.

But they’re not fascist
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spence

02-10-2025, 06:44 AM

Pete F.

02-10-2025, 08:31 AM

We will see if they ignore the Courts.
Some of what they are doing assumes future evil plans.
You wouldn't dismantle the agency (CFPB) that has and would protect consumers from corporate abuse and scams unless you wanted your rich buddies to be able to abuse and scam consumers.
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Nebe

02-10-2025, 09:00 AM

Well worth a watch.

https://www.reddit.com/r/missouri/s/k0d7NrzP0j
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wdmso

02-10-2025, 09:26 AM

Well worth a watch.

https://www.reddit.com/r/missouri/s/k0d7NrzP0j
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Very informative, simple to the point historical basis. But it comes down to will Trump supporters be willing to admit they’ve been lied to.. like the man asked .

Honestly, I doubt it. They will just label this Trump derangement syndrome. Which is actually a Trump supporter affliction.
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Nebe

02-10-2025, 09:44 AM

I agree. As I often say, “Its a cult”. Just like jonestown everyone was willing to die before they could grasp it was all a ridiculous stack of lies.

I think that the average trump voter will just blame joe biden and obama for the pain that Trump and Co are going to put on them or say its just a natural market correction. Real pain is coming down the pipe for the not so well off.
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RIROCKHOUND

02-10-2025, 10:11 AM

I think that the average trump voter will just blame joe biden and obama for the pain that Trump and Co are going to put on them or say its just a natural market correction. Real pain is coming down the pipe for the not so well off.
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Of course. None of this will be Trumpy's fault. It will be blamed on Biden or the Derp State.

Read The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control, by Steve Hassan (he is also on the StandUp! with Pete Dominick Podcast today, worth a listen)

Pete F.

02-10-2025, 11:06 AM

Well the FFOTUS is threatening everyone that he’ll invoke tariffs again. He’s doing this by using emergency powers that were foolishly given to the Presidency by Congress.

Section 8: Powers of Congress

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,

He’s playing a dangerous game where the United States holds at best 30% of the chips and threatening the holders of the other 70%.
He’s counting on BRICS who hold 36% of the chips to not be able to get any of the remaining third of the world economies to join them.
Unless he succeeds in his current coup, he will likely only hold the house and senate thru the midterms.
They all realize that and are waiting to see what happens in the short term.
Any combination of players can buy Canadian oil and LNG to make up the Canadian shortfall, this in turn will drive energy prices up in the USA by half.
China has banned the export of a number of rare minerals to the United States and we cannot easily replace them, Canada has some of them but do you think they trust FFOTUS?
These are interesting and scary times we are living in
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Pete F.

02-10-2025, 11:37 AM

This is from an article in The Atlantic
It’s gifted on Bluesky in the link

"The US is sliding toward a more 21st-century model of autocracy: competitive authoritarianism—a system in which parties compete in elections but incumbent abuse of power systematically tilts the playing field against the opposition...retreat to the sidelines could be fatal for democracy."
https://bsky.app/profile/pt007.bsky.social/post/3lhtgmpdtp22v
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Got Stripers

02-10-2025, 01:40 PM

If we make it to the mid terms and there are actually elections, I suspect our democracy might survive. If Trump and his billionaire buddies have their way, it will be over before then and it might take drastic action to reverse it, I wouldn't want to bet my kids future on which way it goes.

Pete F.

02-10-2025, 05:34 PM

A view from a European
https://youtu.be/8lvUwrmMtFA?si=vna5g3ej08xbZ_rp
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Pete F.

02-10-2025, 05:44 PM

Nothing to worry about

We call upon our elected representatives to stand with us and to insist upon adherence to the rule of law and the legal processes and procedures that ensure orderly change. The administration cannot choose which law it will follow or ignore. These are not partisan or political issues. These are rule of law and process issues. We cannot afford to remain silent. We must stand up for the values we hold dear: The ABA will do its part and act to protect the rule of law.
We urge every attorney to join us and insist that our government, a government of the people, follow the law. It is part of the oath we took when we became lawyers. Whatever your political party or your views, change must be made in the right way. Americans expect no less.
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wdmso

02-11-2025, 11:00 AM

Just saw google maps. Changed Gulf of Mexico to gulf of America.. it’s amazing how cowardly these private companies are. Bending the knee to Herr Trump
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spence

02-11-2025, 11:07 AM

Just saw google maps. Changed Gulf of Mexico to gulf of America.. it’s amazing how cowardly these private companies are. Bending the knee to Herr Trump
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device
It’s only for US users, will likely be changed back in just under four years. I wouldn’t order new encyclopedias just yet.

wdmso

02-11-2025, 11:15 AM

It’s only for US users, will likely be changed back in just under four years. I wouldn’t order new encyclopedias just yet.

It’s all a dog and pony show. Like renaming fort Bragg. After some random guy named Bragg from world war 2. Hint hit wink wink. Telling maga we outsmarted the left
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Got Stripers

02-11-2025, 12:09 PM

What's next, Trump might be thinking of wiping out the borders of Great England, Scotland and Wales and renaming it the UK. Then there is Trump's favorite city Belgium, not sure what he will do with that gem of geography stupidity.

Pete F.

02-11-2025, 12:24 PM

It’s all a dog and pony show. Like renaming fort Bragg. After some random guy named Bragg from world war 2. Hint hit wink wink. Telling maga we outsmarted the left
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Trump isn’t kidding. When he insists that the 2020 election was stolen, that USAID is a complete fraud…that Arab states will help him empty & gentrify Gaza, that tariffs will lower prices, he’s not saying things he knows are false or preposterous. He just really believes this lunacy. He’s deranged.
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Nebe

02-11-2025, 02:43 PM

Hes not kidding. Hes just flat out lying. 2 plus 2 is 5
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Pete F.

02-11-2025, 03:13 PM

Trump's DEI policies are going just swell.

Dismantling Excellence with Idocracy
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PaulS

02-11-2025, 04:32 PM

Trump State Department official has repeatedly called for mass sterilization of ‘low-IQ trash’

A Trump State Department official has, on a number of occasions, called for the sterilization of “low-IQ trash,” a new report has revealed.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has appointed Darren Beattie to be the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior role that represents American foreign policy to the world.

In May 2024, Beattie wrote on X: “Population control? If only!”

“Higher quality humans are subsidizing the fertility of lower quality humans,” he added, calling it the “Foundational reality of social and political life in the post-war West.”

NOTUS initially reported on Beattie’s comments.

In January 2023, he wrote: “The hierarchy of taboos is interesting. The horrific practice of 2nd trimester abortion is legal in some places and well within Overton window of public discourse. But idea of offering feral populations financial incentives for voluntary sterilization is completely taboo.”

In October of that year, he responded to a video of people in a neighborhood in Atlanta, saying: “When a population gets feral, a little snip snip keeps things in control. Could offer incentives (Air Jordans, etc.).”

He again questioned abortion rights in March 2021.

“Interesting moral universe we live in where abortion is celebrated, but the notion of giving smart people incentives or cash to start families is so far out of Overton window no sitting politician of either party would dare advocate it,” he said.

Beattie made a similar suggestion in May last year, writing: “Pay smart people to have more kids, disincentivize stupid people from having kids. So simple but molds destiny on deep intergenerational level.”

“Where do these population reduction conspiracies come from? All I see is trash multiplying,” he wrote in January 2023.

Beattie previously served as a speechwriter for Trump, but he was fired in 2018 after he spoke at a conference attended by white nationalists. He has backed repressive crime policies and often spoken in support of the Chinese government, according to NOTUS.

Meanwhile, Rubio has in the past spoken out against such population control policies advocated by Beattie, including calling China’s previous one-child policy a “grotesque violation of basic human rights.”

Following his senate confirmation last month, Rubio told State Department employees that “All men are created equal because our rights come from God our Creator” — comments at odds with Beattie’s statements about some people being “trash.”

Beattie’s posts often focus on race, and he has derided different groups.

He responded in September 2023 to news regarding African migrants rioting in Israel by saying that the Israeli government “could literally just round them up and drop them in the ocean. Let the ‘human rights groups’ whine... drop them in the ocean too!”

In May of that year, Beattie wrote on X that “It's not politically correct to say, but low-IQ, low-impulse control populations lack higher reasoning and moral faculties---they require strict corporal punishment and threat of violence to function properly within a society. Instead of anarcho-tyranny, we need Singapore for the dumb and violent, and Sweden for the more elevated.”

In January 2023, Beattie also slammed the “prevalence of fight videos.”

“Third world low iq sucker punch fights over nothing, with dumb animal spectators jumping up and down in excitement,” said Beattie. “The same low-IQ trash who watch the fast and furious franchise. Beginning to wish the whole population reduction conspiracy were true.”

Last week, Rubio told reporters that Beattie was chosen for the post by the Trump transition team. He added that Beattie would be focusing on fighting censorship.

Pete F.

02-11-2025, 05:27 PM

Elon Musk: "If the bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have?"

That’s the question, Elon fits the definition.

A bureaucrat is a member of a bureaucracy and can compose the administration of any organization of any size, although the term usually connotes someone within an institution of government.

The bureaucrat Elon Musk is asked about peddling a false claim about the $50 million in condoms to Gaza,

He says that there will be "things I say will be incorrect and should be corrected" and that "nobody is going to about 100%”

Truly sad and humiliating to see Donald Trump, the President, just sit there weak and quiet as Elon Musk, an unelected billionaire, acts like the President and talks to the media in the Oval Office. Wild scene.

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Pete F.

02-11-2025, 10:57 PM

Now we’re going to have political officers to make sure the government follows the plan.
I’ve seen this before, I think they were called commissars and they ensured adherence to the Party.

MAGA’s so afraid of a communist dictatorship that they elected a communist dictatorship.

January 20, 2025 (Reforming the Federal Hiring Process and Restoring Merit to
Government Service).
(b) Hiring Approval. Each Agency Head shall develop a data-driven plan, in consultation with its DOGE Team Lead, to ensure new career appointment hires are in highest-need areas.
(i) This hiring plan shall include that new career appointment hiring decisions shall be made in consultation with the agency's DOGE Team Lead, consistent with applicable law.
(ii) The agency shall not fill any vacancies for career appointments that the
DOGE Team Lead assesses should not be filled, unless the Agency Head determines the positions should be filled.
(iii) Each DOGE Team Lead shall provide the United States DOGE Service
(USDS) Administrator with a monthly hiring report for the agency.
(c) Reductions in Force. Agency Heads shall promptly undertake preparations to
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spence

02-12-2025, 04:28 AM

Rmarsh

02-12-2025, 05:16 AM

spence

02-12-2025, 05:44 AM

More crying from the sackless hypocrites. Fifteen pages of butthurt stupidity.
So ....what action will you take to stop this great president's agenda? Nothing....that is what you will do. Absolutely nothing.
That is what this support group is for....safe space for wounded libs to vent. This thread may ease your angst and keep me mildly entertained....with a few good laughs mixed in.
Four more years...losers.
You need some new material Marsh. Looks like the courts are slowing this illegal power grab considerably.

It’s been asked several time but you keep dodging the question so I’ll ask it again. Do you believe in the Constitution?

Rmarsh

02-12-2025, 06:01 AM

You need some new material Marsh. Looks like the courts are slowing this illegal power grab considerably.

It’s been asked several time but you keep dodging the question so I’ll ask it again. Do you believe in the Constitution?

Ive asked questions....several. Only one answered. Of course I believe in the Constitution. See how easy. As far as debates...i will pass.....waste of time with TDS patients.
Will you hypocrites be taking the fight to the streets ...as your elite democrat leaders....Maxine Waters and Chuck Shummer have suggested? I doubt it....sackless.

spence

02-12-2025, 06:13 AM

Ive asked questions....several. Only one answered. Of course I believe in the Constitution. See how easy. As far as debates...i will pass.....waste of time with TDS patients.
Will you hypocrites be taking the fight to the streets ...as your elite democrat leaders....Maxine Waters and Chuck Shummer have suggested? I doubt it....sackless.
Thanks, I guess you’re either a hypocrite or just don’t understand what the Constitution is, Trump certainly doesn’t. At least we’ve found the problem.

As for the streets, expect protests to grow if this insanity continues.

Rmarsh

02-12-2025, 06:23 AM

Thanks, I guess you’re either a hypocrite or just don’t understand what the Constitution is, Trump certainly doesn’t. At least we’ve found the problem.

As for the streets, expect protests to grow if this insanity continues.

Keep guessing....you are clueless. If democrats protest....the midterms will complete their total ass whooping. I here there is going to be a protest in Fairhaven on president's day. Can we count on a few of you dimwits to show up?

Got Stripers

02-12-2025, 06:23 AM

You need some new material Marsh. Looks like the courts are slowing this illegal power grab considerably.

It’s been asked several time but you keep dodging the question so I’ll ask it again. Do you believe in the Constitution?

His response to your question is right out of the mini me play book with the classic deflection, followed by the usual venom and Trump favorite lines. It’s not that he can’t debate, it’s because he won’t knowing it would expose his inability to defend Trump, project 25 and Musk’s moves as constitutional and abiding by the rule of law.

Rmarsh

02-12-2025, 06:29 AM

His response to your question is right out of the mini me play book with the classic deflection, followed by the usual venom and Trump favorite lines. It’s not that he can’t debate, it’s because he won’t knowing it would expose his inability to defend Trump, project 25 and Musk’s moves as constitutional and abiding by the rule of law.

Knowingly debating with TDS idiots is not productive. Nudging you clowns to expose youre hypocrisy is.

wdmso

02-12-2025, 07:02 AM

Military Drops Recruiting Efforts at Prestigious Black Engineering Awards Event

Claiming DEI https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/02/10/military-drops-recruiting-efforts-prestigious-black-engineering-awards-event.html

The number of Black recruits in the Army -- the largest military service by far -- has risen over the years. In 2022, Black applicants made up 24% of the Army's new enlistments, according to internal data reviewed by Military.com, while Black Americans are just 14% of the general population.

Thats going to change ..

I hear there is going to be a protest in Fairhaven on president's day. But you don’t have TDS …. It odd how much you hear.. and how little you know..

So much white. Sorry I mean winning. From Trump

spence

02-12-2025, 07:06 AM

Keep guessing....you are clueless. If democrats protest....the midterms will complete their total ass whooping. I here there is going to be a protest in Fairhaven on president's day. Can we count on a few of you dimwits to show up?
Trump voters will be protesting, you still don’t get it.

Got Stripers

02-12-2025, 07:06 AM

Knowingly debating with TDS idiots is not productive. Nudging you clowns to expose youre hypocrisy is.

You prove our points about you with every post, must be hard on you wanting to engage, but knowing exposure is the inevitable outcome.

Rmarsh

02-12-2025, 07:11 AM

You prove our points about you with every post, must be hard on you wanting to engage, but knowing exposure is the inevitable outcome.

You have no points....and this is too freaking easy.
Pace yourselves...its going to be a long time before you feel well again. Im heading off for work....dont want you fools to think im hiding. Ill be back to see who #^&#^&#^&#^& themselves later.

Got Stripers

02-12-2025, 07:18 AM

Talk about easy, reading you is like reading a children's book for ages 1-3, but thanks again for the well thought out and predictable response.

Rmarsh

02-12-2025, 07:22 AM

Talk about easy, reading you is like reading a children's book for ages 1-3, but thanks again for the well thought out and predictable response.

Cry some more....then respond again and again. Precious

wdmso

02-12-2025, 07:40 AM

The Associated Press says reporter was barred from White House event The wire service said the decision stemmed from a style guidance to continue using the name Gulf of Mexico instead of Gulf of America.

Sounds like something RMARSH would do. It petty it’s childish. And Authoritarian

But the behavior is from the POTUS …. And yet many like RMARSH cheer thinking Trumps showing strength… .. by renaming the Gulf. And banning the AP and not bending the knee ��

Nebe

02-12-2025, 08:11 AM

Cry some more....then respond again and again. Precious

You do realize you represent all the signs of being a fascist, right?
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Pete F.

02-12-2025, 08:18 AM

Actually banning the reporter is a flat out, clear cut violation of the first amendment.
Last night in the Oval Office, President Harry Bolz and Trump claimed to have knowledge of vast waste, fraud or maybe just things that don’t fit their agenda.
To date they have provided no evidence of anything.
One of them claimed that a female government employee’s net worth increased by 20 million during her tenure and claimed that was some kind of evidence of something.
Since the election both Presidents, who are employed by the government, net worths have increased by multiples of that.
One of them gained most of his net worth through government contracts and assistance (from both the USA and the CCP), the other one consistently violates the Emolument clause of the Constitution.
There’s evidence of both of those.
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Pete F.

02-12-2025, 08:43 AM

This is interesting for two reasons, the substance of the OpEd and the fact that it’s in Bezo’s WAPO which since the election has been silent about the administration’s actions.

From the WAPO

Why DOGE is unconstitutional
Trump is acting extra-constitutionally. Only Congress or the Supreme Court can stop him.

By Alan Charles Raul
Alan Charles Raul served as associate White House counsel under President Ronald Reagan and as general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget under Reagan and President George H.W. Bush. He currently serves as board secretary of the Society for the Rule of Law and is a lecturer at Harvard Law School.

President Donald Trump, his appointees, acting officials and quasi-official outsiders are in the midst of a radical restructuring or termination of government employees, agencies and programs. Whether this is in all, many or some regards desirable is debatable. Also debatable is whether the 49.8 percent of the electorate who elected Trump want all of this, and whether the 50.2 percent who voted for Kamala Harris or a third-party candidate want any of it.
What is not debatable, however, is that Congress has not authorized this radical overhaul, and the protocols of the Constitution do not permit statutorily mandated agencies and programs to be transformed — or reorganized out of existence — without congressional authorization.

The Constitution is well known to interpose meaningful checks and balances and a separation of powers among the responsibilities of the executive, legislative and judicial branches. It is also well understood that the respective branch’s powers and duties will intersect and overlap. Fundamentally, however, all legislative power belongs to Congress, and executive power to the president. The judiciary steps in when the parameters of shared authority get complicated or confusing and constitutional lines are crossed.
The radical reorganization now underway is not just footfaulting over procedural lines; it is shattering the fundamental checks and balances of our constitutional order. The DOGE process, if that is what it is, mocks two basic tenets of our government: that we are nation of laws, not men and that it is Congress which controls spending and passes legislation. The president must faithfully execute Congress’s laws and manage the executive agencies consistent with the Constitution and lawmakers’ appropriations — not by any divine right or absolute power.
Where the president identifies policy areas that need reform or spending that needs to be supplemented, reduced or eliminated, the Constitution empowers him to recommend such measures as he finds “necessary or expedient” to Congress for it to dispose one way or the other, or alternatively ignore.
Yes, the president may advance his own policy agenda — including, of course, the ability to recommend reforms to Congress that he believes necessary or expedient. But there is no reading of the Constitution that allows any president to claim that a political mandate, or a political promise made, obviates or supersedes the role for Congress. It is the House and Senate that “make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for … the Government of the United States or in any Department or Officer thereof.”
Even under the most aggressive view of the president’s “unitary executive” control over the entire executive branch and independent agencies, it is Congress’s sole authority to appropriate and legislate for our entire government. The president basically directs the executive branch within the contours prescribed by Congress, subject to constitutional checks and balances. To be sure, the president and Congress share policy responsibility because the president recommends budgets and necessary and expedient measures to Congress, whose bills the president can sign into law or veto. But in the end, the president is constitutionally stuck with the policies for the federal government that Congress enacts and appropriates. No one man in America is the law — not even a Trump or an Elon Musk.
So, how can the radical overhaul Trump and Musk are undertaking be reconciled with our constitutional order? Quite simply, it cannot be. Congress must step in to enact this radical transformation — or the Supreme Court must stop it.
In the past several years, the court has provided unmistakable direction that Congress, and not the executive, determines the scope and policy for the country. The court even narrowed the president’s previously long-held entitlement to deference when interpreting ambiguous laws and policies.
Specifically, the Trump-Musk quest for government efficiency is led by a “department” that Congress did not establish, by unelected operatives who exercise overwhelming authority without appointment under the appointments clause, who are not subject apparently to any checks and balances, who are not faithfully executing the laws Congress has appropriated and legislated, and who are in the process of eliminating whole agencies, programs and millions of employees without any congressional authorization whatsoever. And they are doing so without explaining and recommending such measures to Congress (or to the public, for that matter).

If all this is not a “major question” for Congress to decide with respect to the impact and consequence for America, then nothing is.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/11/trump-congress-courts-doge-musk/
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Pete F.

02-12-2025, 08:57 AM

Since it’s Lincoln’s birthday today

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/february-11-2025?r=9qki5&utm_medium=ios

On February 12, 1809, Nancy Hanks Lincoln gave birth to her second child, a son: Abraham.
Abraham Lincoln grew up to become the nation’s sixteenth president, leading the country from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865, a little over a month into his second term. He piloted the country through the Civil War, preserving the concept of American democracy. It was a system that had never been fully realized but that he still saw as “the last, best hope of earth” to prove that people could govern themselves.
Lincoln grew up in rural poverty as wealthy enslavers took over prime land in his family's home state of Kentucky and pushed them across the Ohio River to Indiana, where Nancy Lincoln died. From there, they moved on to the frontier state of Illinois, where Abraham sowed seed, hoed fields, grubbed roots, cut trees, made fences, and harvested crops both at home and for farmers to whom his father hired him out for wages, for the elder Lincoln never managed to get his feet under him after leaving Kentucky.
In 1831, finally an adult, Abraham set out to make his mark in the world, as did thousands of other young men in his dynamic era. But making it on his own wasn’t much easier for the young Lincoln than it had been for his father. He settled in the town of New Salem, a village of about a hundred people on a bluff above the Sangamon River, where he failed as a storekeeper, then cobbled together various jobs, eking out a living splitting rails and making deliveries. Government appointments, first as a postmaster and then as a surveyor, kept him afloat and made him well enough known that in 1834, voters elected him to the state legislature, and he was on his way to prominence.
Lincoln’s time as a young man on the make had made him think hard about the relationship between Americans and their government. In his era, elite southern enslavers insisted that government had no role to play in the country except in protecting property, a concept of government that permitted them to amass fortunes thanks to the labor of their Black neighbors. But Lincoln had watched his town of New Salem die because its settlers—hard workers, eager to make the town succeed—could not dredge the Sangamon River to promote trade by themselves.
Lincoln later mused, “The legitimate object of government is ‘to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves,’… as public roads and highways, public schools, charities, pauperism, orphanage, estates of the deceased, and the machinery of government itself.”
Once elected to the presidency, Lincoln joined with members of his new Republican Party to make the government work for the American people. They created national money and the income tax. They took land from speculators and gave it to men willing to farm it. They established public colleges to enable poor men to get an education, the Department of Agriculture to make sure poor men had access to good seeds, and transcontinental railroads so poor men could both get to western lands and get their products back to eastern markets. And they used the power of the federal government to end human enslavement in the United States except as punishment for crime.
A generation later, under Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, progressives at the turn of the twentieth century expanded on Lincoln's understanding of the role of government in supporting the American people. In that era, corrupt industrialists increased their profits by abusing their workers, adulterating milk with formaldehyde and painting candies with lead paint, dumping toxic waste into neighborhoods, and paying legislators to let them do whatever they wished.
Those concerned about the survival of democracy worried that individuals were not actually free when their lives were controlled by the corporations that poisoned their food and water while making it impossible for individuals to get an education or make enough money ever to become independent.
To restore the rights of individuals, progressives of both parties argued that individuals needed a strong, active government to protect them from the excesses and powerful industrialists of the modern world. Under the new governmental system that Theodore Roosevelt pioneered, the government cleaned up the sewage systems and tenements in cities, protected public lands, invested in public health and education, raised taxes, and called for universal health insurance, all to protect the ability of individuals to live freely without being crushed by outside influences.
Reformers sought, as Roosevelt said, to return to “an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.”
In the 1920s, the idea that the government should be run as a business eclipsed Roosevelt’s progressive government, but after the Great Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression, Democrats under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s offered a “new deal for the American people.” That New Deal meant that the government would no longer work simply to promote business, but would also regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, and promote infrastructure. World War II accelerated the construction of that active government, and by the time it was over, Americans quite liked the new system.
After the war, Republican Dwight Eisenhower embraced the active government. He explained that in the modern world, the government must protect people from disasters created by forces outside their control, and it must provide social services that would protect people from unemployment, old age, illness, accidents, unsafe food and drugs, homelessness, and disease.
He called his version of the New Deal “a middle way between untrammeled freedom of the individual and the demands of the welfare of the whole Nation.” One of his supporters echoed Lincoln when he explained, “If a job has to be done to meet the needs of the people, and no one else can do it, then it is the proper function of the federal government.” Both Republicans and Democrats embraced this idea, which became known as the “liberal consensus.” In the second half of the twentieth century, they expanded the role of government to protect civil rights, the environment, access to healthcare and education, equal opportunity in employment, and so on.
But those who objected to the liberal consensus rejected the idea that the government had any role to play in the economy or in social welfare and made no distinction between the liberal consensus and international communism. They insisted that the country was made up of “liberals,” who were pushing the nation toward socialism, and “conservatives” like themselves, who were standing alone against the Democrats and Republicans who made up a majority of the country and liked the new business regulations, safety net, infrastructure, and protection of civil rights.
That reactionary mindset came to dominate the Republican Party after Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980. Republicans began to insist that anyone who embraced the liberal consensus of the past several decades was un-American and had no right to govern, no matter how many Americans supported that ideology. And now, forty-five years later, we are watching as a group of reactionaries dismantle the government that serves the needs of ordinary Americans and work, once again, to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of an elite.
The idea of a small government that serves the needs of a few wealthy people, Lincoln warned in his era, is “the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent.”
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RIROCKHOUND

02-12-2025, 09:06 AM

You do realize you represent all the signs of being a fascist, right?
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

It doesn’t matter, as long as Trump is owning the Libs.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

spence

02-12-2025, 09:07 AM

It doesn’t matter, as long as Trump is owning the Libs.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device
Inflation ticking up and we haven’t even seen the trade war yet.

Pete F.

02-12-2025, 09:16 AM

A historic amount of corruption.

The 11 federal agencies so far targeted for firings or dismantling by Elon Musk have more than 30 ongoing investigations into his companies.
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Rmarsh

02-12-2025, 09:31 AM

You do realize you represent all the signs of being a fascist, right?
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device
Nice part of getting older....not giving a rats sperm what others think. Don't need anyone's approval and say what I want ..when I want to.
You going to the massive protest in Fairhaven on president's day? It's going to be epic.

RIROCKHOUND

02-12-2025, 09:32 AM

Inflation ticking up and we haven’t even seen the trade war yet.

Doesn’t matter Libs got owned.
Wait till the steel and aluminum tariffs kick in. That’ll be great for building and construction, right?
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

spence

02-12-2025, 09:42 AM

Doesn’t matter Libs got owned.
Wait till the steel and aluminum tariffs kick in. That’ll be great for building and construction, right?
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device
Building are made of concrete, not steel, but of course you don’t know that because you don’t develop real estate. Or know anything about chemical reactions in crushed rocks.

The steel and aluminum tariffs will lower the price of cars, and a lot.

Auto companies have been using wwaaayyyy too much of these in cars for far too long because of unnecessary regulation and DEI. You see, because the auto companies are forced to make DEI hires that are always incompetent, they may be minorities, or in some cases can’t decide what gender they are. These morons don’t know how to engineer squat so they have to use more, like double the materials to make cars safer in crashes.

Think of a car door, you used to be able to push it, now you can’t push it, but there’s no reason you need to push it. I’ve been studying this for many, many months.

This has been going on for far, far too long and it’s over TODAY!

PaulS

02-12-2025, 10:08 AM

Pete F.

02-12-2025, 10:33 AM

Tesla stores and charging stations are now protest hotspots!

Turns out, unelected Elon Musk and his fake government agency, DOGE, aren’t sitting well with folks watching democracy get destroyed.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Pete F.

02-12-2025, 10:50 AM

Elon Musk changed his name on his Twitter account (where he has 217 million followers) to Harry Bölz (hairy balls) in the event you were hoping a sane adult had access to all of your personal information and was running the country.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Got Stripers

02-12-2025, 12:51 PM

I wonder if his fanboys realize he constantly lied to them about everything he was going to do on day one and have such low respect for themselves that they don't care or is it they aren't smart enough to realize he lied to them and that he doesn't care that he lied to them?

Don’t write Marsh’s profile description, it will just result in more insults and left deep state liberal hatred. He thinks he is getting a laugh out of this, ironically the last laugh will be on the MAGA cult after potus screws the economy and sends the costs of goods much higher, after they thought they elected him to fix that. We all get a chuckle out of his sooooo predictable rants, but at times it’s almost sad to see anyone that brainwashed and without the capacity to distinguish lies from truth. Anyone care to predict his response to this, he is a one trick pony.

Pete F.

02-12-2025, 01:03 PM

The USAID debacle will make Benghazi look good.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Got Stripers

02-12-2025, 01:18 PM

ABA President William Bay warned that the new administration's "chaotic" approach is threatening the rule of law and said the ABA will act to ensure legal processes are followed — adding that courts will serve as a “bulwark” against constitutional violations.

I’m confused did’t Trump pledge an oath to uphold the constitution?

Pete F.

02-12-2025, 01:20 PM

Crazy: Putin is now openly flattering Trump for threatening tariffs on our allies, claiming it shows how strong Trump is. That's telling. Putin knows tariffs could weaken the western alliance, so he's egging Trump on!
And FFOTUS is repeating it
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wdmso

02-12-2025, 01:48 PM

we know One thing Trump gave Putin for giving up the Teacher ... can't wait to see what else.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-disbands-task-force-targeting-russian-oligarchs-2025-02-06/

Trump administration disbands task force targeting Russian oligarchs

A memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi, issued on Wednesday during a wave of orders on her first day in office but not previously reported, said the effort, known as Task Force KleptoCapture, will end as part of a shift in focus and funding to combating drug cartels and international gangs.

Pete F.

02-12-2025, 02:41 PM

Mayor Adams, Putin and his Oligarchs, Elon, January 6, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon, Ross Ulbricht, Charles Kushner, Andrew Zabavsky and Terence Sutton, etc.

“For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.” — Peru’s General Óscar Benavides or FFOTUS
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Pete F.

02-12-2025, 03:27 PM

Pete F.

02-12-2025, 03:41 PM

The Trumplicans have confirmed Tulsi Gabbard.

The real-world impact here is that the USA relies on intelligence sharing with a number of allies, the most critical being under the Five Eyes pact. I can't help but think they will be loath to share significant intelligence with the USA for fear their sources will be compromised.
The damage to our intelligence gathering sets us back decades.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

wdmso

02-12-2025, 04:07 PM

The "unanimously" elected is a nice touch. Makes it even more North Korea-like.

“President Donald J. Trump was just unanimously elected Chairman of the Board of the prestigious Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The President stated, "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!"”
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

petty petty Man .. and again his supporters :faga:

On Monday, Trump named Grenell as the interim executive director of the Kennedy Center in a post on Truth Social. The position plunged leadership at the Kennedy Center into confusion, as the position “executive director” does not exist.

Pete F.

02-12-2025, 04:39 PM

The United States is now an open kleptocracy. The Constitution has been suspended to allow the wealthiest man in the world to loot and destroy the federal government.

Elon Musk is working to transform X, his social media platform, into a virtual wallet where people can send money to each other. He likely has all your information. Digital payment platforms have come under intense scrutiny by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but that is likely to ease.

Tesla is forecast to win the largest State Dept contract of 2025 -- $400 million for "Armored Tesla" -- according to procurement documents reviewed by drop site news
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Pete F.

02-12-2025, 04:57 PM

“I’m here today to directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States from being the primary guarantor of security in Europe.”

US Secretary of Defence, February 12, 2025.

Everything changed today.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

wdmso

02-12-2025, 05:25 PM

Elon Musk's Tesla on Tuesday opened an enormous $200 million battery plant in Shanghai, near its carmaking Gigafactory, deepening the company's investment in China even as its CEO serves in an administration picking a trade war with Beijing.

Find me a negative comment from musk involving china . On any topic.

I bet you can’t
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Got Stripers

02-12-2025, 06:45 PM

No longer helping with EU security, guessing withdrawal from Nato will be coming. No longer looking into bribery, no enemies list at AG confirmation, except now there is. Don’t worry maga change might be only painful at first wink wink.

Pete F.

02-12-2025, 09:12 PM

If you’re bored
1. Google Gulf of Mexico.
2. "Gulf of America" will be at the head of Google's answer.
3. Click on the three little dots to the right of "Gulf of America".
4. Select "Send Feedback"
5. Click on "Gulf Of America" text.
6. Select "Inaccurate content".
7. Select "Incorrect" and type in whatever text you want such as "The correct name of this body of water is "Gulf of Mexico".
The more reports to Google the merrier....
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Pete F.

02-12-2025, 11:24 PM

Did FFOTUS plan and implement project 2025?

https://youtu.be/MLbh7GXw0Es?si=ZuCDc1d9Wki5imbk
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Rmarsh

02-13-2025, 03:31 AM

This thread is going great. Surpassed my expectations.
Emotionally broken TDS sufferers coming together to share their pain. That is what I intended. You're Welcome

Pete F.

02-13-2025, 09:04 AM

Trump DOJ confirms they will ask SCOTUS to overrule Humphrey’s Executor rather than defend independent agencies / multi member commissions like the FTC, etc.

(So they’re arguing Trump can fire the boards and commissioners that lead these agencies)
If they overrule Humphrey's, the Fed will be vulnerable. A few thoughts: (1) If SCOTUS doesn't gut Humphrey's (unlikely), it will be because they're concerned about the Fed. They recently rejected a constitutional challenge to the CFPB that would have jeopardized Fed funding, too- in part for that reason.
It's also possible SCOTUS tries to write an opinion that artificially carves out the Fed - or at least drops a footnote that makes clear that would be a separate case; and possible that, in that future case, they would make something up to protect the Fed -like insisting they (The Fed) don't/doesn't exercise significant executive authority. But it would probably be an exception good for that entity only - and made up.
It's also possible they just say "#^&#^&#^&#^& it, let's do it! (global economic turmoil & a great recession/depression)" Especially if R officials aren't sounding alarms....

Remember for Billionaires, economic downturns are an opportunity unlike the average American who loses the wealth that the billionaires gain.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

RIROCKHOUND

02-13-2025, 09:04 AM

This thread is going great. Surpassed my expectations.
Emotionally broken TDS sufferers coming together to share their pain. That is what I intended. You're Welcome

How about instead of the TDS bull#^&#^&#^&#^&, you try and contribute a thought or opinion?
Your in the trades, and you look to do great work from your posts.
Is a 25% tariff on Steel and Aluminum good for the country? We can maybe ramp up steel production (it sort of came up in 2018 when Trump tried this) but we don't have the raw materials to do that for Aluminum as most of the Bauxite (the ore) is found in more tropical climates. How about if we further tariff Canadian lumber?

Pete F.

02-13-2025, 09:13 AM

There are two types of Trump supporters.
Billionaires and idiots, check your bank account to see which one you are.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Pete F.

02-13-2025, 10:51 AM

How about instead of the TDS bull#^&#^&#^&#^&, you try and contribute a thought or opinion?
Your in the trades, and you look to do great work from your posts.
Is a 25% tariff on Steel and Aluminum good for the country? We can maybe ramp up steel production (it sort of came up in 2018 when Trump tried this) but we don't have the raw materials to do that for Aluminum as most of the Bauxite (the ore) is found in more tropical climates. How about if we further tariff Canadian lumber?

Steel is currently at less than capacity and tariffs will do nothing other than drive up prices for the cheapest steel that is produced more economically elsewhere (Nucor rebar prices increased $2 per hundred weight last week on the threat alone)

Steel.org analysis published weekly
In the week ending on February 8, 2025, domestic raw steel production was 1,675,000 net tons while the capability utilization rate was 75.2 percent. Production was 1,726,000 net tons in the week ending February 8, 2024, while the capability utilization then was 77.7 percent. The current week production represents a 3.0 percent decrease from the same period in the previous year. Production for the week ending February 8, 2025 is up 1.1 percent from the previous week ending February 1, 2025 when production was 1,656,000 net tons and the rate of capability utilization was 74.4 percent.

Aluminum tariffs if applied to all imported aluminum will increase domestic prices and likely reduce exports.

Aluminum industry doesn’t produce only US production. Aluminum.org is a North American entity.
Canada because they have abundant cheap hydroelectric power is the major producer of aluminum from bauxite.
Both the USA and Canada further process the raw material into finished products. This is either used in the USA or exported.
Bauxite which aluminum is produced from is mined in Australia, Guinea, India, Brazil and China.
The USA mines produce less than 1% of the world’s bauxite.

On the lumber market
Canadian mills are closing along with USA mills.
The day of the small sawmill growing into a bigger and bigger company are gone.
The modern wood industry has timber harvesting by machines, logs get a coded identification, log transportation is the same, mills have no humans inside during operation.(the sawyer is in a booth and optimization is by computer)
Workers only do repairs and maintenance.
The capital costs are large and margins are small.
It looks like the lumber industry will be controlled by several very large corporations who will have monopolies.
The current regimes elimination of regulations on large corporations will accelerate that.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

wdmso

02-13-2025, 11:06 AM

wdmso

02-13-2025, 11:22 AM

just in.

Trump administration set to purchase $400 million worth of armored Teslas

After reports circulated Wednesday night of the State Department's intent to purchase Tesla vehicles, the document was edited, at 9:12 p.m., and now says the federal contract is for $400 million worth of "armored electric vehicles," but the word "Tesla" was removed..

And like MAGIC. suddenly no further conflict of interest or
no waste fraud or abuse is a concern

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/13/g-s1-48571/trump-administration-order-400-million-worth-of-armored-teslas

Pete F.

02-13-2025, 11:37 AM

We have never seen an unelected bureaucrat have as many government contracts and receive as much corporate welfare as Elon Musk.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

wdmso

02-13-2025, 11:53 AM

RFK Jr. confirmed, elevating anti-vaccine activist to nation’s top health post

Republicans have officially capitulated what cowards
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Pete F.

02-13-2025, 12:08 PM

RFK Jr. confirmed, elevating anti-vaccine activist to nation’s top health post

Republicans have officially capitulated what cowards
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

DISEASES ERADICATED OR DECIMATED BY SCIENCE:
1. Chickenpox
2. Diphtheria
3. Measles
4. Pertussis
5. Pneumococcal Infection
6. Polio
7. Tetanus
8. Typhoid
9. Yellow Fever
10. Smallpox

DISEASES ERADICATED OR DECIMATED BY RFK JR. OR PRAYER:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Make previously eradicated diseases great again!

Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Got Stripers

02-13-2025, 12:17 PM

We have never seen an unelected bureaucrat have as many government contracts and receive as much corporate welfare as Elon Musk.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Yup, this is a big power and money grab, the magna nuts will see the impact soon, but they will find a way to suggest Biden is responsible and Trump is only cleaning up the mess. Then there is Mitch, voting against RFK, any guess how that vote would go if he weren’t retiring? My father a decorated Marine veteran and die hard republican his entire life would be shocked and ashamed of what this party of cowards has become.

Pete F.

02-13-2025, 02:00 PM

Apparently Mexico is also renaming part of the Gulf of Mexico
Above the line between the south end of Texas and Florida it’ll become
Golfo del Gringo Loco
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Pete F.

02-13-2025, 02:15 PM

Trump renames CDC
Center for Denial and Conspiracy
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

wdmso

02-13-2025, 05:05 PM

Jack Posobiec’s extensive ties to white supremacists should serve as a wake-up call for anyone who hasn’t made the connection between Trump’s MAGA movement and hate,

Guess where he is. Trump administration officials at the Pentagon invited a far-right activist, Jack Posobiec, to participate in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s first trip overseas, And in Ukraine

But nothing to see right.

Rmarsh

02-14-2025, 03:22 AM

wdmso

02-14-2025, 06:57 AM

I understand your frustation. Id be crushed too if my candidate got such an ass whooping. Canadian lumber is overpriced garbage.

If I recall Tump lost in 2016

Oh wait you still think it was stolen. ..:rotflmao:

Got Stripers

02-14-2025, 07:06 AM

Pete F.

02-14-2025, 08:56 AM

It only took FFOTUS 24 days to sell out Ukraine.
I think the Europeans are foolish if they don’t attack Russia as soon as possible.
Russia is the weakest it has been since WW2 and delaying will only allow Putin to rebuild his military.
I expect Putin to test Article 5 shortly with a strike, likely in one of the Baltics.
I think the wild card is Xi Jinping who at this moment with the cooperation of Putin could get the European G7 countries to join BRICS and make the dollar just another currency.
Putin would completely withdraw from Ukraine, Europe would not need to attack Russia, the unpredictable USA would be moot.
The other choice is global conflict.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Pete F.

02-14-2025, 09:12 AM

I understand your frustation. Id be crushed too if my candidate got such an ass whooping. Canadian lumber is overpriced garbage.

You do realize Canadian lumber already has a 14.5% tariff and Americans have historically gone to foreign markets and bought the cheapest stuff possible to import.
Winton went out of business because Americans were too cheap to buy the good stuff.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Pete F.

02-14-2025, 10:38 AM

Worth reading
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/path-american-authoritarianism-trump
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Pete F.

02-14-2025, 10:51 AM

He wound up to deliver this slap

BY EMAIL
Re: United States v. Eric Adams, 24 Cr. 556 (DEH)
Mr. Bove,
I have received correspondence indicating that I refused your order to move to dismiss the indictment against Eric Adams without prejudice, subject to certain conditions, including the express possibility of reinstatement of the indictment. That is not exactly correct. The U.S.
Attorney, Danielle R. Sassoon, never asked me to file such a motion, and I therefore never had an opportunity to refuse. But I am entirely in agreement with her decision not to do so, for the reasons stated in her February 12, 2025 letter to the Attorney General.
In short, the first justification for the motion-that Damian Williams's role in the case somehow tainted a valid indictment supported by ample evidence, and pursued under four different U.S. attorneys-is so weak as to be transparently pretextual. The second justification is worse.
No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives.
There is a tradition in public service of resigning in a last-ditch effort to head off a serious mistake. Some will view the mistake you are committing here in the light of their generally negative views of the new Administration. I do not share those views. I can even understand how a Chief Executive whose background is in business and politics might see the contemplated dismissal-with-leverage as a good, if distasteful, deal. But any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way. If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.
Please consider this my resignation. It has been an honor to serve as a prosecutor in the
Southern District of New York.
Yours truly,
Hagan Scotten
Assistant United States Attorney
Southern District of New York
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

PaulS

02-14-2025, 10:58 AM

Don't forget Danielle R. Sassoon (U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York) was a very conservative member of the Federalist Society. She clerked for Scalia.

Pete F.

02-14-2025, 11:25 AM

Strong rumor with credible sourcing: DOJ has put all of public integrity line attorneys in a room and told them they have an hour for someone to choose who will sign motion to dismiss and if nobody does, they will all be fired. The nastiest strong-arming in DOJ history by a long shot.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Pete F.

02-14-2025, 12:04 PM

Don't forget Danielle R. Sassoon (U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York) was a very conservative member of the Federalist Society. She clerked for Scalia.

Hagan Scotten, who wrote this spectacular resignation letter, was an army ranger for 8 years, top of his law school class (Harvard) & a John Roberts law clerk. Not exactly a candidate for Trump’s liberal deep state.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Pete F.

02-14-2025, 12:15 PM

Those awful DEI hires
Don’t forget JD Vance got into law school with DEI
https://youtu.be/JvXoR4bHEmY?si=c6HfI-q1mhZ1ycuh
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wdmso

02-14-2025, 04:02 PM

Vance meets with leader of far-right German party

Vance said. “No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants,”

I am sure he reminded them of a another corporal from their Past.

Pete F.

02-14-2025, 04:11 PM

FFOTUS is still upset that Biden said he would cure cancer so he’s going to save it.

Termination notices going out this afternoon to more than 300 employees of the National Cancer Institute. Access likely ends today. Four weeks paid leave and that’s it.

Strong power move for Team Cancer.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Pete F.

02-14-2025, 04:23 PM

CDC source:

“We just had word that all our fellows and post doc staff are laid off effective immediately. The famous Epidemic Intelligence Service, aka the Disease Detectives, is no more. That’s 1260 staff.

They are calling this ‘Phase 1’.”
But don’t worry, I know a guy who’s really smart his uncle was a professor at MIT
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Pete F.

02-14-2025, 04:51 PM

DEI hire JD Vance meets leader of AFD but not the Chancellor of Germany. Essentially endorsing the neo-Nazi party before the German elections.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

RIROCKHOUND

02-15-2025, 10:18 AM

Was the clip of Elmo’s kid ‘X’ telling Trump he’s not the president and needs to go away, real or AI?
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Nebe

02-15-2025, 10:27 AM

DEI hire JD Vance meets leader of AFD but not the Chancellor of Germany. Essentially endorsing the neo-Nazi party before the German elections.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

If we needed any more confirmation that this country is now run by fascists.
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spence

02-15-2025, 11:03 AM

If we needed any more confirmation that this country is now run by fascists.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device
Not just cheerleading fringe right wing nationalists, berating the EU that Russia and China aren’t a threat but internal liberalism is.

Expect the US to walk from Ukraine, weaken NATO and Trump to try and use economic threats to get Russia back into the G7.

Nebe

02-15-2025, 11:04 AM

Its pretty obvious.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

detbuch

02-15-2025, 12:27 PM

Its pretty obvious.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Actually, dismantling or defanging various oppressive and unconstitutional government bureaucracies is the opposite of fascism.

spence

02-15-2025, 12:57 PM

Actually, dismantling or defanging various oppressive and unconstitutional government bureaucracies is the opposite of fascism.
Welcome back. Too bad that’s not what they’re doing.

Here’s a shout out to even more rank stupidity

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-administration-wants-un-fire-nuclear-safety-workers-cant-figure-rcna192345

Trump administration wants to un-fire some nuclear safety workers but can’t figure out how to reach them
The individuals, who work in an agency that oversees the nation's nuclear stockpile, had been fired on Thursday and lost access to their federal government email accounts.

detbuch

02-15-2025, 01:22 PM

Welcome back.

Thanks. Didn't really intend to get much involved and am amused at the steadfast opinions. Nothing changed. I guess that's some form of stability. Which, one might guess, is a good thing.

Too bad that’s not what they’re doing.

Yeah, it fundamentally, or incidentally, is what they're doing. It's no secret that I contend that most of the federal regulatory agencies are unconstitutionally granted plenary power to regulate the citizens of this country.

Here’s a shout out to even more rank stupidity

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-administration-wants-un-fire-nuclear-safety-workers-cant-figure-rcna192345

No doubt mistakes will be made. And corrected. And it is not only unconstitutional to give plenary power to these agencies, it is fascistic.

Rmarsh

02-15-2025, 01:51 PM

No doubt mistakes will be made. And corrected. And it is not only unconstitutional to give plenary power to these agencies, it is fascistic.

I wondered when someone not lockstepp with the resistance would voice some reason and a lot more patience with foolishness. Then again I was on the hockey team and skipped the debate club.

wdmso

02-15-2025, 02:35 PM

Actually, dismantling or defanging various oppressive and unconstitutional government bureaucracies is the opposite of fascism.

Too bad that is your opinion which isn’t based on facts or laws but rather a feeling …

Also DOGE aims to target staffers who are not in DEI roles and employees who work in offices established by law to ensure equal rights, internal DOGE documents show.

Those pesky laws

wdmso

02-15-2025, 02:46 PM

Trump officials fired nuclear staff not realizing they oversee the country’s weapons stockpile, sources say

Trump administration officials fired more than 300 staffers Thursday night at the National Nuclear Security Administration — the agency tasked with managing the nation’s nuclear stockpile — as part of broader Energy Department layoffs, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.

Sources told CNN the officials did not seem to know this agency oversees America’s nuclear weapons.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/14/climate/nuclear-nnsa-firings-trump/index.html

But keep cheerleading this madness as legitimate

Pete F.

02-15-2025, 03:05 PM

So the convicted Felon posted today on the social media site he owns

Donald J. Trump
@realDonald Trump
He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.
2.03k ReTruths 8.03k Likes
2/15/25, 11:53

I would expect that he who posts this should expect it to show up in briefs challenging what he does.

We are at the point where we find out shortly if The United States are governed by the rule of law or Musk and Trump.
I’ll leave the question of who holds presidential power, the man who ran or the man who bought it to history.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

detbuch

02-15-2025, 03:07 PM

Too bad that is your opinion which isn’t based on facts or laws but rather a feeling …

It is based on the Constitution which does not give Congress the power to delegate its powers and responsibilities. It can establish agencies to investigate, advise, and recommend. But it cannot delegate its power to them to legislate or regulate.

Also DOGE aims to target staffers who are not in DEI roles and employees who work in offices established by law to ensure equal rights, internal DOGE documents show.

Those pesky laws

Pesky laws that delegate the congressional power of creating law to unelected agencies other than Congress itself, are constitutionally illegitimate.

piemma

02-15-2025, 03:41 PM

Good to see you back.

Got Stripers

02-15-2025, 03:50 PM

If Only.

Warren Buffett, "I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," he told CNBC. "You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election. The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971...before computers, e-mail, cell phones, etc. Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure.
I am asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise. In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around.
*Congressional Reform Act of 2019*
1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.
2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.
3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.
4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.
7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 7/1/19. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term's), then go home and back to work.
If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S.) to receive the message. Maybe it is time.

wdmso

02-15-2025, 04:32 PM

Pesky laws that delegate the congressional power of creating law to unelected agencies other than Congress itself, are constitutionally illegitimate.

Again your argument isn’t based on on facts or current laws

It’s emotional..

wdmso

02-15-2025, 04:35 PM

Pete F.

02-15-2025, 06:00 PM

So using his logic. An assassin. Could not be charged …. For saving the nation. From him. Ya ok

That could happen with the rule of FFOTUS
I think we should stick with rule of law
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Pete F.

02-15-2025, 06:10 PM

detbuch

02-15-2025, 06:22 PM

Again your argument isn’t based on on facts or current laws

It’s emotional..

The doctrine of nondelegation is not emotional. It is based on separation of powers in constitutional governments. It is a long standing principle pre-dating our own Constitution.

Per Wikipedia:
"The doctrine of nondelegation (or non-delegation principle) is a theory that one branch of government must not authorize another entity to exercise the power or function which it is constitutionally authorized to exercise itself. It is explicit or implicit in all written constitutions that impose a strict structural separation of powers. The non-delegation doctrine stands for the principle that Congress cannot delegate its legislative powers or lawmaking ability to other entities. This prohibition typically involves Congress delegating its powers to administrative agencies or to private organizations."

It was not significantly questioned until the FDR administration appointed enough Progressive SCOTUS judges to allow a so-called "implied" power of Congress to delegate power to agencies other than Congress itself so long as Congress provides an "intelligible principle" to do so.

Well, of course, "intelligible principle" can be totally subjective, or, as you say, even emotional in derivation.

The FDR administration ravaged the Constitution, as admitted by one of FDR's Braintrust members Rex Tugwell, and basically reduced it to a matter of opinion.

There are currently suggestions that the nondelegation doctrine may be revisited in SCOTUS.

That would be nice, especially if we have enough "originalist" oriented opinions on it. I wouldn't bank on it.

But my contention is not based on "emotion." Not that emotion would not, or should not, be part of the equation.

wdmso

02-15-2025, 08:08 PM

The doctrine of nondelegation is not emotional. It is based on separation of powers in constitutional governments. It is a long standing principle pre-dating our own Constitution.

Per Wikipedia:
"The doctrine of nondelegation (or non-delegation principle) is a theory that one branch of government must not authorize another entity to exercise the power or function which it is constitutionally authorized to exercise itself. It is explicit or implicit in all written constitutions that impose a strict structural separation of powers. The non-delegation doctrine stands for the principle that Congress cannot delegate its legislative powers or lawmaking ability to other entities. This prohibition typically involves Congress delegating its powers to administrative agencies or to private organizations."

It was not significantly questioned until the FDR administration appointed enough Progressive SCOTUS judges to allow a so-called "implied" power of Congress to delegate power to agencies other than Congress itself so long as Congress provides an "intelligible principle" to do so.

Well, of course, "intelligible principle" can be totally subjective, or, as you say, even emotional in derivation.

The FDR administration ravaged the Constitution, as admitted by one of FDR's Braintrust members Rex Tugwell, and basically reduced it to a matter of opinion.

There are currently suggestions that the nondelegation doctrine may be revisited in SCOTUS.

That would be nice, especially if we have enough "originalist" oriented opinions on it. I wouldn't bank on it.

But my contention is not based on "emotion." Not that emotion would not, or should not, be part of the equation.

I forgot you believe in Originalism that’s like being a flat earth believer

It’s just an excuse to avoid the truth of the reality we actually live in.

Not 13 colonies and it. 2.5 million people and but 50 states and there. 334.9 million citizens. (2023)

But we’ve had this discussion before. Let’s move on.. and i actually I would rather have this conversation in person.. because I honestly can’t compete with your writing skills. And that’s not being sarcastic.. it’s a compliment

Rmarsh

02-15-2025, 10:30 PM

A day of protest against fascism. How many sackless hypocrites will be taking it to the streets? I hear that at least eight people have commited to attending......weather permiting:rotf3:

Pete F.

02-15-2025, 10:35 PM

The wealthiest vandal in the world is hard at work

What happened is NNSA OST Nuclear Materials Courier team was terminated while transporting a physics package. They are stranded with it and no one to call so they are trying to make the best of it by improvising a secure location and standing watch.
This is all 100% the work of Musk he is wrecking the US with no one watching over his shoulder.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Rmarsh

02-15-2025, 10:38 PM

Pete F.

02-15-2025, 10:59 PM

A day of protest against fascism. How many sackless hypocrites will be taking it to the streets? I hear that at least eight people have commited to attending......weather permiting:rotf3:

Probably this person

Donald J. Trump Hello Sir. I am one of the probationary employees terminated by the Doge at 9:00pm last night; February 14th. I voted for you, Sir, three times, and I still support you. I was encouraged by the DOGE to see they were getting rid of wasteful government spending; I support that too. My termination letter said I was being let go for performance reasons. I know that's not true; I am an excellent employee. I've been with the Federal government for almost 16 years. Sixteen years in June. I had started my career with USDA, transferred to DHS, and recently came back to USDA because it's such a great Agency to work for. Surely that must count for something in your eyes. I'm loyal and I firmly believe that the work I do as a USDA APHIS PPQ employee is vital and important. My boss, his boss, the managers in neighboring states, all agree I'm doing an excellent job and that I'm a great asset to the team. I'm the only
in the State of Kentucky and my work here is valued and honorable. Each time I voted for you, it was because I knew you'd make things right and you'd fix the wrongs. I'm counting on you now to make this right too. I'm pleading with you to reinstate my employment and give me my job back. Please, Mr. President. Thank You
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

detbuch

02-15-2025, 11:00 PM

I forgot you believe in Originalism that’s like being a flat earth believer

That's interesting. But I don't see the connection.
Could you point it out for me?

It’s just an excuse to avoid the truth of the reality we actually live in.

Whatever you envision the reality we actually live in to be, how have I lied (avoided the truth) about the nondelegation doctrine, or about the fact that creating hundreds of unelected government agencies with plenary power over the people is being fascistic? How is that all an "excuse"?

Not 13 colonies and it. 2.5 million people and but 50 states and there. 334.9 million citizens. (2023)

Did the "truth" of the nondelegation doctrine embedded in the Constitution become a lie with the addition of every new state? Or with the addition of every new citizen? Do statehood and the elements of humanity change in their basic nature as they become more numerous? Should we write a new Constitution or create a different form of government every time the population grows?

The "truth of the reality we live in" constantly changes in some way on a daily basis. One day a man is a man. The next day a man is a woman. The next day that's bunk. Is there no constant? Just total constant change? How is it possible to even have a state, a defined government, a defined human being, under such conditions?

So far, as I can see, humans have not gone through some basic evolutionary change since the time of the 13 colonies. Sure, there are the superficial surface changes in standards of living, cultural shifts, boundary changes, and so forth. But basic humanity, its physical and even metaphysical needs are pretty much the same, just different names and places. But the basic needs to be nourished, to be loved, to have fellowship, to procreate, to have family, and to have a personal amount of freedom and autonomy within a predictable, stable, society in which to flourish remain a constant.

And, as far as I can see, the original US Constitution still remains as one of the most viable governmental systems in which to achieve those basic needs.

But we’ve had this discussion before. Let’s move on..

"Let's move on" . . . to where? I hear that mantra, quite often . . . and it usually seems to be an "excuse" to escape from the "truth of the reality we live in" . . . into an undefined relief from the reality of a monotonous unbending "constitution" or other, or to justify the legal machinations of a preferred political party . . . Constitution, human nature, individual freedom, be damned . . .

and i actually I would rather have this conversation in person.. because I honestly can’t compete with your writing skills. And that’s not being sarcastic.. it’s a compliment

I mentioned, before, in the old political forum, that you had improved in your writing skills. You have taken it a notch up in those since then.

And I don't consider this a competition. That's why I hate debates where the goal is more to win than to convince and to arrive at some truth.

Pete F.

02-15-2025, 11:04 PM

Imagine if Barack Obama or Joe Biden said they were above the law.

Imagine if Obama or Biden were pocketing tens of millions of dollars while they were in office.

Imagine if Obama or Biden pardoned people who violently attacked the Capitol to prevent a Republican from taking office.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Rmarsh

02-15-2025, 11:20 PM

I mentioned, before, in the old political forum, that you had improved in your writing skills. You have taken it a notch up in those since then.

Up a notch from fifth grade level?
When he gets stuck he falls back to hitler comparisons.

Pete F.

02-15-2025, 11:23 PM

Napoleon-"He who saves his country, violates no law."
- Hitler– “The good of the state stands above the law.”
- Mussolini– “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”
- Francisco Franco– “I am responsible only to God and to history.”

History buffs will know that every authoritarian leader eventually converges on some version of: "I *am* the state. I can not break the law, I am the law, the law is instantiated in me."

Our march to authoritarianism so far has been excruciatingly by-the-book. Hitting every beat. No surprises.

He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.
Donald Trump convicted Felon
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Pete F.

02-15-2025, 11:34 PM

Meanwhile in Russia: Sergey Mikheyev says that in light of the Trump administration's express intent to abandon NATO allies in case they intervene in Ukraine, Russia should strike Brussels, London and Paris. Vladimir Solovyov wholeheartedly agrees.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Rmarsh

02-15-2025, 11:48 PM

Probably this person

Donald J. Trump Hello Sir. I am one of the probationary employees terminated by the Doge at 9:00pm last night; February 14th. I voted for you, Sir, three times, and I still support you. I was encouraged by the DOGE to see they were getting rid of wasteful government spending; I support that too. My termination letter said I was being let go for performance reasons. I know that's not true; I am an excellent employee. I've been with the Federal government for almost 16 years. Sixteen years in June. I had started my career with USDA, transferred to DHS, and recently came back to USDA because it's such a great Agency to work for. Surely that must count for something in your eyes. I'm loyal and I firmly believe that the work I do as a USDA APHIS PPQ employee is vital and important. My boss, his boss, the managers in neighboring states, all agree I'm doing an excellent job and that I'm a great asset to the team. I'm the only
in the State of Kentucky and my work here is valued and honorable. Each time I voted for you, it was because I knew you'd make things right and you'd fix the wrongs. I'm counting on you now to make this right too. I'm pleading with you to reinstate my employment and give me my job back. Please, Mr. President. Thank You
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device
He should protest....or just go look for an honest job.

Any protests in your local? The one down here might be cancelled do to safety concerns. Sidewalks could be slippery.

spence

02-16-2025, 07:13 AM

No doubt mistakes will be made. And corrected. And it is not only unconstitutional to give plenary power to these agencies, it is fascistic.
Ok Elon, maybe you can make another fake twitter poll so the hackers and bots and will proclaim their verdict.

250 years of unconstitutional actions have led to a situation so dire that it can only rightly be corrected through radical, mostly illegal and insanely irresponsible unconstitutional action. WTF?

For a time I actually thought Reagan Republicans would make a come back. Remember the shining city on a hill inclusive of everyone to be lifted up? Hell, old Ronny was the first DEI president!

“Accidentally” firing the people who keep our nuclear arsenal safe isn’t an “oops” it’s just another example of how they couldn’t give a crap about average Americans. Just like cutting the CDC while we’re on the brink of another outbreak or illegally eliminating USAid which keeps our troops out of harms way is equally illegal and dumb.

But no, let’s weaken our alliances, withdraw our influence and coddle authoritarians and dictators. While we’re at it flaunt the rule of law, suppress the media and eliminate government oversight.

This is all very “Constitutional” and by your reading just what the Founding Fathers envisioned, except it’s what they hoped would never come to be.

Give me a break.

Pete F.

02-16-2025, 07:49 AM

As Vance 'lectures' Europe on free speech, it is good to be reminded that the United States ranks 55 (!) on the World Press Freedom Index.

The top 10 countries are ALL in Europe.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Got Stripers

02-16-2025, 08:11 AM

So we went from hate and insults spewing from Marsh, to a midwest troll who apparently missed using is colored words of wisdom and propensity to put us to sleep with his rambling posts.

Pete F.

02-16-2025, 08:13 AM

He should protest....or just go look for an honest job.

Any protests in your local? The one down here might be cancelled do to safety concerns. Sidewalks could be slippery.

This #^&#^&#^&#^& doesn’t happen in France and I’ll tell you why: the rich went too far once and they cut all their heads off and now, when those in power #^&#^&#^&#^& workers over, the French stop working. Don’t forget your real power Americans. They don’t let you have unions for a reason.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

wdmso

02-16-2025, 08:17 AM

A day of protest against fascism. How many sackless hypocrites will be taking it to the streets? I hear that at least eight people have commited to attending......weather permiting:rotf3:

Seeing you’re an expert on being a sackless hypocrite.. I am sure you’ll let us know

Man you get easily triggered when other Americans exercise their constitutional rights?

Why is that ..

wdmso

02-16-2025, 08:22 AM

Scholz blasts Vance’s support for Germany’s far right Some see the Trump administration actively promoting political extremism in the West.

Scholz the actual elected leader of Germany. And Vance the VP Alf the United State did try to meet with him…

Rmarsh

02-16-2025, 08:33 AM

Seeing you’re an expert on being a sackless hypocrite.. I am sure you’ll let us know

Man you get easily triggered when other Americans exercise their constitutional rights?

Why is that ..

You are pathetically confused and continue to ASS ume.

I laugh at your nonsense when you try so hard to be smart.

Are you going to the protest? Im guessing no.

Or just blowing smoke again.? Im guessing again... yes.

Got Stripers

02-16-2025, 08:40 AM

Why is that ..

Simple he is a go down with the ship cult member. He is ok with nuclear material and secrets being mishandled. He is ok with funding and a long standing partnership with NIH stopping, no matter that they could be working on something that could save the lives of tens of thousands of Americans. He is ok with cuts and layoffs which will make care and assistance for our veterans even harder than it already is. Apparently he is ok with the ethnic cleansing proposed for the Palestinians. Not to mention he is ok with a billionaire attempting to steel the power of the purse and in the process making himself money. He can’t contribute any argument for these positions, which are just the tip of the iceberg, a mini me Trump cult member to the end.

Got Stripers

02-16-2025, 08:53 AM

Very good oped.

After World War II, the vast majority of Americans—Democrats and Republicans alike—agreed that the federal government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights. But not everyone was on board. Some big businessmen hated regulations and the taxes necessary for social welfare programs and infrastructure, and racists and religious traditionalists who opposed women’s rights wanted to tear that “liberal consensus” apart.
They had no luck convincing voters to abandon the government that was overseeing unprecedented prosperity until the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision permitted them to turn back to an old American trope. That ruling, which declared segregation in the public schools unconstitutional, enabled opponents of the liberal consensus to resurrect the post–Civil War argument of former Confederates that a government protecting Black rights was simply redistributing wealth from hardworking white taxpayers to undeserving Black Americans.
That argument began to take hold, and in 1980, Republican president Ronald Reagan rode it to the White House with the story of the “welfare queen,” identified as a Cadillac-driving, unemployed moocher from Chicago’s South Side (to signal that the woman was Black). “She has 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards and is collecting veteran’s benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands,” Reagan claimed. “And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names.” The woman was real, but not typical—she was a dangerous criminal rather than a representative welfare recipient—but the story illustrated perfectly the idea that government involvement in the economy bled individual enterprise and handed tax dollars to undeserving
Black Americans.
Republicans expanded that trope to denigrate all “liberals” of both parties, who supported an active government, claiming they were all wasting government monies. Deregulation and tax cuts meant that between 1981, when Reagan took office, and 2021, when Democratic president Joe Biden did, about $50 trillion moved from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. But rather than convincing Republican voters to return to a robust system of business regulation and restoring taxes on the wealthy and corporations, that transfer of wealth seemed to make them hate the government even more, as they apparently were convinced it benefited only nonwhite Americans and women.
That hatred has led to a skewed idea of the actions and the size of the federal government. For example, Americans think the U.S. spends too much on foreign aid because they think it spends about 25% of the federal budget on such aid while they say it should only spend about 10%. In fact, it spends only about 1% on foreign aid. Similarly, while right-wing leaders insist that the government is bloated, in fact, as Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institution noted last month, the U.S. population has grown by about 68% in the last 50 years while the size of the federal government’s workforce has actually shrunk.
What has happened is that federal spending has expanded by five times as the U.S. has turned both to technology and to federal contractors, who outnumber federal workers by more than two to one. Those contractors are concentrated in the Department of Defense. At the same time, budget deficits have been driven by tax cuts under Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump as well as the unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the Treasury actually ran a surplus when Democratic president Bill Clinton was in office in the 1990s.
When asked, Americans say they don’t actually want to get rid of government programs. A late January poll from the Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research—a gold-standard pollster for public attitudes—found that only about 29% of Americans wanted to see the elimination of a large number of federal jobs, with 40% opposed (29% had no opinion). Instead, 67% of adults believed the U.S. is spending too little on Social Security, 65% thought it was spending too little on education, 62% thought there is too little aid for the poor, 61% thought there is too little spending on Medicare, and 55% thought there is too little spending on Medicaid. Fifty-one percent thought the U.S. should spend more on border security.
Nonetheless, Trump is echoing forty years of Republican rhetoric when he claims to have a “mandate” to slash government and to purge it of the diversity, equity, and inclusion programs that hold the playing field level for Black Americans, women, people of color, and ethnic, religious, and gender minorities.
On February 11, Trump signed an executive order putting billionaire Elon Musk in charge of “large-scale reductions in force,” and yesterday, Musk and his allies began purging the federal government of career employees, beginning with employees still in their probationary period, typically those with less than a year in the job. The Department of Veterans Affairs lost 1,000 people, the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau lost more than 100 people, the U.S. Department of Agriculture lost more than 2,400, the U.S. Forest Service lost more than 3,000, the Environmental Protection Agency lost 400, the Small Business Administration lost more than 100, and the Interior Department lost 2,300, including workers at national parks. The Department of Health and Human Services is expected to lose nearly all of its 5,200 workers in their probationary period, including 1,300 at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—10% of its workforce—while the National Institutes of Health (NIH) lost 1,500. “I am heartbroken, more than anything, for the future of science in this country as we gut this institution that has for so long been intentionally shielded as much as possible from politics,” an NIH employee told Will Stone, Pien Huang, and Rob Stein of NPR.
Five government employees’ unions have sued, saying the mass firings violate the formal procedures for reductions in force. Employees say they were already understaffed and there is no way they will be able to keep up the level of their performance under the cuts. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) points out that rather than saving money, “it is a massive waste of taxpayer dollars to fire employees the department just invested months into recruiting, vetting and training.”
On Reddit, federal employees shared their experience. One wrote: “The thing that I can’t get over is that the actual richest man in the world directed my f*cking firing. I make $50K a year and work to keep drinking water safe. The richest man in the world decided that was an expense too great for the American taxpayer.”
It certainly appears that those in charge of the firings didn’t know what they were doing: on Thursday they fired more than 300 workers at the National Nuclear Security Administration, apparently not aware that they were the people who oversee the nation’s nuclear weapons. Today, Peter Alexander and Alexandra Marquez of NBC News reported that officials are now trying to rehire them but can’t figure out how to reach them because the workers lost access to their work email when they were fired.
The firings of federal employees come after the Trump administration instituted a “freeze” on federal spending. This impoundment of funds is illegal—the Constitution, Congress, and the courts have all established that once Congress has established a program, the president must implement it. But the truth is that Congress implemented these programs for a reason, and members would not kill them because they recognize they are important for all Americans.
Now MAGA voters are now discovering that much of what billionaire Elon Musk is cutting as “waste, fraud, and corruption” is programs that benefit them, often more than they benefit Democratic-dominated states. Dramatically, farmers, who backed Trump by a margin of three to one, are badly hit by the freeze on funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act for conservation of land, soil, and water. “This isn’t just hippie-dippy stuff,” Wisconsin cattle, pig, and poultry farmer Aaron Pape told Linda Qiu and Julie Creswell of the New York Times. “This is affecting mainstream farmers.”
Similarly, the shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is a blow to the agricultural sector: USAID buys about $2 billion in agricultural products from U.S. farmers every year. It has also supported funding for research at state universities like the University of Tennessee, the University of Missouri, and the University of Louisiana.
Cuts to indirect spending in grants from the National Institutes of Health will also hit hard across the country, and states where Trump won more than 55% of the 2024 vote are no exception. Former college president Michael Nietzel noted in Forbes that Texas stands to lose more than $300 million; Ohio, more than $170 million; and Tennessee, Missouri, and Florida, more than $130 million apiece. These losses will cause thousands of layoffs and, as the Association of American Medical Colleges said, “diminish the nation’s research capacity, slow scientific progress and deprive patients, families and communities across the country of new treatments, diagnostics and preventive interventions.”
Trump said Wednesday he wanted to shutter the Department of Education immediately, calling it “a big con job.” That Department provides grants for schools in low-income communities as well as money for educating students with special needs: eight of the ten states receiving the most federal money for their K–12 schools are dominated by Republicans.
Trump has called the Federal Emergency Management Agency a “disaster” and said states should handle natural disasters like hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and tornadoes on their own. But states do not have the resilience they need for such short-term emergencies. Once again, while all states receive FEMA money, Republican-dominated states get slightly more of that money than Democratic-dominated states do.
Before the 2024 election, Aaron Zitner, Jon Kamp, and Brian McGill of the Wall Street Journal noted that by 2022, 53% of the counties in the U.S. received at least a quarter of their income from government programs—primarily through Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Those counties heavily support Republicans, including Trump.
On Friday the Republican-dominated House Budget Committee presented its budget proposal to the House. It calls for adding $4.5 trillion to the budget deficit in order to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. It also calls for $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, including cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and supplemental nutrition programs. Budget Committee chair Jodey Arrington (R-TX) said: “The era of wasteful, woke, and weaponized government is over.”
For forty years, Republican politicians could win elections by insisting that government spending redistributed wealth from hardworking taxpayers to the undeserving because they did not entirely purge the federal programs that their own voters liked. Now Trump, Musk, and the Republicans are purging funds for cancer research, family farms, national parks, food, nuclear security, and medical care—all programs his supporters care about—and threatening to throw the country into an economic tailspin that will badly hurt Republican-dominated states.
A January AP/NORC poll found that only 12% of U.S. adults thought it would be good for billionaires to advise presidents, while 60% thought it would be bad.
Forty years of ideology is under pressure now from reality, and the outcome remains uncertain.

Rmarsh

02-16-2025, 08:56 AM