The goddamn Trump Administration

Politics
3101

I feel about these people two ways:

There are those who are Palestinian and are living this fucked up experience. I feel sympathy for that because it’s a brutal amount of suffering watching loved ones die and losing a home. We can all relate to that past a certain point in life save for the overprivileged perhaps? The scale less so, but still it’s obvious there is a victim here. If it was my mom I’d prioritize her life over the rest of the world just like them… whether I wanted to or not.

It’s hard for me to imagine that taking the shape of not voting if I could but… I can kind of think of reasons these people might find or have to not vote anyway also.

The ones who are trying for something and did it badly. Them I hate. Them I blame. You’ve said nicely very much how I feel and it has shifted who I will listen to in the future for the rest of my life.

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3102

Thank you; I was planning to write a similar post today.

Allies are not always friends. The Soviet Union was our ally in WWII, but never became our friend. But there was a common objective both nations fought together for.

Sometimes adversaries become friends: Japan and Germany became pretty steadfast Allies and friends after the war, as alliances shifted, as did our understanding of the common good.

While this is an imperfect analogy, the point is not to make the perfect the enemy of the good.

Right now the goal is to preserve and protect American Democracy. If that means accepting people who, through choices for whatever reason, put that at risk, then I am willing to accept them into the alliance to achieve that goal. It doesn’t mean I will trust them and let my guard down. It doesn’t mean I will forgive them. But I won’t turn away their help on achieving that objective.

And if former adversaries (such as rural communities that suddenly find themselves decimated by the terrible policies enacted by the administration) eventually become friends, I’ll accept that, too.

There is too much at stake to worry about purity tests. Let’s wrest control of our country back from the fascists and send them packing, first, then decide what to do with our alliances after.

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3103

Grocery prices will be coming down as soon as he signs this.

I will be signing an Executive Order next week ending the ridiculous Biden push for Paper Straws, which don’t work. BACK TO PLASTIC!

They’re keep shouting this but so far no one has said what the fraud is.

I wish someone would report on the actual spending and which bills it was in and what the vote was.

USAID IS DRIVING THE RADICAL LEFT CRAZY, AND THERE IS NOTHING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT BECAUSE THE WAY IN WHICH THE MONEY HAS BEEN SPENT, SO MUCH OF IT FRAUDULENTLY, IS TOTALLY UNEXPLAINABLE. THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE. CLOSE IT DOWN!

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3104

If there’s so much fraud an inspector general should probably… oh wait.

It’s probably the kind of fraud that can only be seen by stable geniuses and galaxy brains in any case.

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3105

jack_black

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3106

“A DOGE employee now has edit access to NOAA documents and the agency has been ordered to halt its international communication.”

So much for hurricane warnings.

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3107
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3108

Only MAGA hurricanes will be allowed. Not these winds from abroad.

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3109

If the movies are to be believed, and apparently they aren’t, I thought you :us:'s got all shooty and head-stompy and hogtied everyone in sight with zip-ties when people tried to break into and take over classified facilities.

Maybe it’s time :canada: sent some DOGE-certificate waiving 19-yr olds with laptops down to see what we can take over, at least while the gettin’ is good. :thinking: Get us some UFO tech from Area 51 or something. /s

I say /s, but it’s pretty clear :cn: is probably ahead of the game on this one, given the excellent kompromat that the inter-webs have already dug up on the DOGE-minions. I’ll buy 2x :beer: and split a bottle of Malört with anyone who’ll take the other side of a bet that Musk is revealed to have MSS contacts and/or a :south_africa: NIA handler.

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3110

I’ll discuss the fraud at USAID.

My first job was with a food aid contract to USAID.

I know A LOT about international food aid, not because I did anything at my job, but because I was so bored off my ass that I read all these academic papers that people spent a lot of time preparing and I don’t think we did anything with them. I think they were supposed to be for some conference. Anyway, I was bored and I read them.

There is a lot of grift in food aid. We send food aid to a country that’s war torn, and the local guerilla warriors take control of it and sell it. We send food aid to a country that has very few roads that can be navigated, people store them at their homes, and then people come and steal it. We send food aid in response to a famine, and then (as in the case of Chad), it becomes a major part of their country’s income.

Yep. There is a LOT of waste, a lot of theft, a lot of corruption.

AND also, the food does get to people who are starving.

Because, you know, people who live in crappy countries need food.

One of my BIG takeaways was how damaging war is. Most famines are caused by war. Lack of infrastructure is a huge deal. I remember reading how Mozambique had all these beaches, right? fish…and the roads were so bad, a lot of people couldn’t get to them, because of war.

International food aid doesn’t always go to help the downtrodden. It can end up being in the hands of an army; it often does. But, it still will get to people who otherwise would have starved.

We are SO SO SO PRIVILEGED in the US. We don’t know how it is to live in a country where people will just steal your shit. We can’t expect these governments to be models of efficiency.

The State Department deals with a lot of different countries with a lot of corruption. It’s the cost of doing business. We still help a lot of people.

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3111

It’s the same strategy that caused train crashes.

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3112

One thing I learned in decades of first aid training; triage. What’s the most serious thing? Deal with that, and then move on. Right now, American democracy is the thing most damaged. If it isn’t saved, all the rest goes down the toilet.

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3113
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3114

Hate speech is ok if you use a pseudonym and delete the account after you’re caught. Everyone knows that. /s

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3115

I wonder how the Indian member of that team feels about “normalizing Indian hate”?

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3116

Now I’m wondering who tipped off the WSJ.

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3117

Ooh; hadn’t thought of that!

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3118

Probably that he just means “the bad Indians”; not anything like himself.

Tasty leopard morsel is his drag name.

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3119

It would be a shame if the DOGE team ripped itself apart with juvenile, paranoid infighting. A real shame.

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3120
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