No, that you didn’t read it on Facebook. Where did you learn about the thing you said?
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Trump Dictatorship and All Things Politics
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No, that you didn’t read it on Facebook. Where did you learn about the thing you said?
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Red
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Looks like a stand alone tweet. Posted 16 hours ago, as of this reply to you…..
Al-O-Meter
Well-Known Member
That may be, but none of that means Zelensky isn't a dictator. Putin too abided by Russia's constitution. They still are both dictators.
Being a dictator isn't in and of itself a problem. The United States has worked with many dictators over our history. The problem with Zelensky is that he wants to be seen as a man who will stand up to the United States and Trump. He is too cowardly to actually stand up to Rubio in person, so he says what he thinks Rubio wants to hear and then runs to the press to say the opposite in an effort to puff himself up as some sort of badass.
It is one thing when an adversary like Putin tries to stab you, but it is something else entirely when someone you thought was a friend, someone who you went to a great effort to help in a time of need, stabs you just to make himself look big. We are the adults in the room and we will try to bring this war to an end, but it is tempting to completely pull out of the conflict and let these two little dictators have each other until both of their countries are rubble.
Al-O-Meter
Well-Known Member
It was responding to the victory the USAO had just won in court.
Judge rejects immediately restoring AP's access to White House but urges government to reconsider
A federal judge has refused to immediately order the White House to restore The Associated Press’ access to presidential events, saying the news organization had not shown it had suffered irreparable harm in the matter.
apnews.com
Al-O-Meter
Well-Known Member
Really? Does information not reach you? Did you not know the issue was challenged in court and the AP lost? It is not like the news only appears in right leaning sources. They AP themselves reported on it, as it Reuters, NPR, and NY Times.
Judge Declines to Intervene in AP Lawsuit Over Trump Access
But the judge hinted that future rulings in the suit could go differently, cautioning the White House to “think about whether what they’re doing is really appropriate.”
That people crawl into silos to shield out news they don't like is weird. I don't get it. Why does someone want to be uninformed about the world?
Red
Well-Known Member
I believe the bottom line, from responses I’ve seen on social media, and elsewhere, is that many MAGA supporters think it’s appropriate for Musk to speak to federal employees, federal servants, as if they were leeches, living off the government. Haters of our civil servants would be surprised at the number of such employees who view “service to their nation” as a noble enterprise. People like Donald Trump do not understand the concept of “service”. You need a degree of humility to recognize and embrace service to nation. And humility is foreign to Trump. Service is an unknown concept. Remember, he broadcast his inability to even know what service was(!!!) not understanding the very concept of citizen-soldiers serving their country by asking “what’s in it for them?”!!
There is nothing whatsoever that Trump supporters or Trump apologists can ever utter, to justify such an atrocious way to treat our public civil servants. And from the get go: insult them, intimidate them. Be like Musk: think the worst of those among your fellow citizens who have chosen public service as their life’s work..
And while you’re at it, confuse the hell out of all of us: Goid luck understanding these conflicting statements. Trump 2.0 will surely be the most incompetent administration in our history, judging from the first month.
View: https://x.com/Eeindc/status/1893990487893090484
View: https://x.com/Curly400/status/1894058709258514457
www.independent.co.uk
Less than 24 hours before the deadline, Musk hinted that the emails were simply a ruse to ensure federal employees were “capable of responding” to his correspondence.
In the early hours of Monday morning, Musk replied to American venture capitalist Garry Tan on X after he shared a post claiming that DOGEwouldn’t be capable of reading all of the federal workers’ responses, calling the initiative “stupid” and “performance art.”
“Most people don’t understand LLMs have changed the nature of management already, and this will be a bit of a shock to people,” Tan tweeted on Sunday night, speaking of large language models: a type of machine learning model designed for processing large data sets of text.
Musk responded that LLMs would not be needed for his task.
“This was basically a check to see if the employee had a pulse and was capable of replying to an email,” Musk said. “This mess will get sorted out this week. Lot of people in for a rude awakening and strong dose of reality. They don’t get it yet, but they will.”
On Sunday afternoon, Musk also referred to the emails as a “very basic pulse check.” That evening, Musk added that a response was indicative that employees have “two working neurons.”
And yet!:
View: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1894177129887404484
And yet!!:
www.bbc.com
“They're succeeding in driving us insane," one employee who works under HHS told the BBC, and asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.
On Monday afternoon, OPM held a call with the heads of human resources at federal agencies and said it was up to each entity to determine how they want to handle the directive employees received Saturday, according to CBS News, the BBC's US partner.
The same afternoon, President Trump told reporters at the White House that Mr Musk's demand was a "genius" move.
"There was a lot of genius in sending it," he said. "We're trying to find out if people are working and so we're sending a letter to people, please tell us what you did last week. If people don't respond, it's very possible that there is no such person or they're not working."
"And then if you don't answer like you're sort of semi-fired or you're fired because a lot of people are not answering because they don't even exist," Trump said.
Mr Musk maintained he was acting on instructions from President Donald Trump.
"Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance," he wrote on X, apparently referring to workers who did not respond to his demand by the end of Monday. "Failure to respond a second time will result in termination."
"The email request was utterly trivial, as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send!" he said in another post. "Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers. Have you ever witnessed such INCOMPETENCE and CONTEMPT for how YOUR TAXES are being spent?"
———————————————————————-
I hope this is all perfectly clear now, for all our citizens, including MAGA, including our “enemy within”(I’m one such, but I prefer “somebody who cares about the ideals at the foundation of our experiment in governance”, which really just seems so much more accurate than “the enemy within”.
There is nothing whatsoever that Trump supporters or Trump apologists can ever utter, to justify such an atrocious way to treat our public civil servants. And from the get go: insult them, intimidate them. Be like Musk: think the worst of those among your fellow citizens who have chosen public service as their life’s work..
And while you’re at it, confuse the hell out of all of us: Goid luck understanding these conflicting statements. Trump 2.0 will surely be the most incompetent administration in our history, judging from the first month.
View: https://x.com/Eeindc/status/1893990487893090484
View: https://x.com/Curly400/status/1894058709258514457
Elon Musk admits email to government workers was a ruse
Department of Government Efficiency head says he wants to test whether federal employees are ‘capable of replying to an email’
www.independent.co.uk
Less than 24 hours before the deadline, Musk hinted that the emails were simply a ruse to ensure federal employees were “capable of responding” to his correspondence.
In the early hours of Monday morning, Musk replied to American venture capitalist Garry Tan on X after he shared a post claiming that DOGEwouldn’t be capable of reading all of the federal workers’ responses, calling the initiative “stupid” and “performance art.”
“Most people don’t understand LLMs have changed the nature of management already, and this will be a bit of a shock to people,” Tan tweeted on Sunday night, speaking of large language models: a type of machine learning model designed for processing large data sets of text.
Musk responded that LLMs would not be needed for his task.
“This was basically a check to see if the employee had a pulse and was capable of replying to an email,” Musk said. “This mess will get sorted out this week. Lot of people in for a rude awakening and strong dose of reality. They don’t get it yet, but they will.”
On Sunday afternoon, Musk also referred to the emails as a “very basic pulse check.” That evening, Musk added that a response was indicative that employees have “two working neurons.”
And yet!:
View: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1894177129887404484
And yet!!:
Confusion over Musk demand that federal workers justify their jobs
Employees get conflicting advice over compliance with a Musk-backed order to list their last week's work or face termination.
www.bbc.com
“They're succeeding in driving us insane," one employee who works under HHS told the BBC, and asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.
On Monday afternoon, OPM held a call with the heads of human resources at federal agencies and said it was up to each entity to determine how they want to handle the directive employees received Saturday, according to CBS News, the BBC's US partner.
The same afternoon, President Trump told reporters at the White House that Mr Musk's demand was a "genius" move.
"There was a lot of genius in sending it," he said. "We're trying to find out if people are working and so we're sending a letter to people, please tell us what you did last week. If people don't respond, it's very possible that there is no such person or they're not working."
"And then if you don't answer like you're sort of semi-fired or you're fired because a lot of people are not answering because they don't even exist," Trump said.
Mr Musk maintained he was acting on instructions from President Donald Trump.
"Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance," he wrote on X, apparently referring to workers who did not respond to his demand by the end of Monday. "Failure to respond a second time will result in termination."
"The email request was utterly trivial, as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send!" he said in another post. "Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers. Have you ever witnessed such INCOMPETENCE and CONTEMPT for how YOUR TAXES are being spent?"
———————————————————————-
I hope this is all perfectly clear now, for all our citizens, including MAGA, including our “enemy within”(I’m one such, but I prefer “somebody who cares about the ideals at the foundation of our experiment in governance”, which really just seems so much more accurate than “the enemy within”.
There is only one justifiable reason to go to war. Stopping genocide.
We usually go to war over land, religion, and economics. None are justified.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
fishonjazz
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What is occurring now in the United States has very little to do with making the government more “efficient,” or rooting out “incompetence," or “depoliticizing” parts of government that should be nonpartisan.
Nor is it motivated chiefly by Trump’s desire get rid of “D.E.I.” and “woke,” or “weaponize” law enforcement, or establish white Christian nationalism, or wreak vengeance on his enemies.
The real story is this.
In every part of the government that involves the use of force — the military, the investigation and prosecution of crimes, the authority to arrest, the capacity to hold individuals in jail — Trump is putting into power people who are more loyal to him than they are to the United States.
He has purged (or is in the process of purging) at the highest levels of the Department of Defense, the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the Inspectors General, and the FBI, anyone who is not personally loyal to him.
Trump is rapidly gaining a personal monopoly on the use of force. This is his most fundamental goal. This is the essence of tyranny.
On Friday, he fired Air Force General CQ Brown Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — the nation’s highest-ranking military officer, as well as the principal military adviser to the president, secretary of defense, and National Security Council.
This was followed by the firings of Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti and Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force General Jim Slife.
The media sees the firings as “part of a campaign to rid the military of leaders who support diversity and equity in the ranks.” This may be part of Trump’s motivation, but it is not the major driver. The firings are part of a campaign to purge the Defense Department of leaders who are not totally loyal to Trump.
For Brown’s replacement, Trump has nominated retired Air Force Lt. General John Dan “Razin” Caine. Caine has not served in any of the positions — Joint Chiefs vice chairman, chief of staff for one of the branches of the armed service, or head of a combatant command — that nominees are legally required to have held in order to be nominated.
Trump isn’t putting Caine in this pivotal position because of the national interest. He’s putting Caine there because of Caine’s unequivocal personal loyalty to Trump. Trump boasted to an audience at last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference that Caine had told him, “I love you, sir. I think you’re great, sir. I’ll kill for you, sir.”
The same is occurring at the Justice Department, where Emil Bove, Trump’s former criminal lawyer who’s now the chief enforcer there, is imposing a Trump loyalty test on prosecutors — demanding they comply with Trump’s demands, however unacceptable and incompatible with norms, or leave.
On Sunday night, Trump announced that MAGA podcaster Dan Bongino will be deputy director of the FBI, alongside newly installed chief Kash Patel. Bongino is a former cop, Secret Service agent, conspiracy theorist, and Fox News commentator who joined Trump’s MAGA world in the 2010s and now hosts a popular podcast.
Bongino’s most important attribute is the same as Patel’s — unswerving personal loyalty to Trump. As elsewhere, Trump is turning the FBI into an extension of his personal will.
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Red
Well-Known Member
This. Could it be anymore obvious? Right off the bat he fired 7 Inspector Generals at federal agencies. What Donald Trump is doing is undeniable: he is appointing loyalists, who he is no doubt counting on obeying him, and not the constitution, should Trump decide a situation calls for it. He will always put himself above the Law. That’s been clear for many years. It is tyranny. Clearly recognizable as un-American. Remember how George Washington made it clear he had no interest in being a king? By retiring. Trump’s design is the opposite of Washington’s. People are free to support this approach if they want, many people in Western democracies prefer authoritarianism anyway. But, this is the foundation steps in creating Strongman rule. This is Trump aiming to be just like his role model, Vladimir Putin. This is most certainly what we don’t want to happen, and time will tell if Trump succeeds in achieving his goal: he wants it understood that, in the United States, Donald Trump IS the State.
Al-O-Meter
Well-Known Member
The problem with this narrative, and the reason it didn't blow up back when it happened, is that it wasn't Obama who did it. Yes it was "Obama's IRS" and Obama let it happen, but the politician who weaponized the IRS to go after conservative groups was John McCain. I'm sad he didn't live long enough to join Liz Cheney on Kamala's stage so that he could be ceremonially strapped to his beloved Deep State Democrats.
Al-O-Meter
Well-Known Member
Do you know what you can't do in a tyranny? You can't criticize the leader.
You are criticizing Trump and no one is coming for you. People are laughing at you as you huddle in your aluminum foil deflector beanie, but in this country you are free to be that way if you wish. Hope your day is going well.
Al-O-Meter
Well-Known Member
South Park season 7, episode 4.
Our nation was set up from the founding to be the best in the world at making war and to be the loudest at complaining about war to disguise how good we are at making war. It is a brilliant episode.
fishonjazz
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Ukraine's parliament has passed a resolution affirming the legitimacy of Volodymyr Zelenskyy as president and confirming that elections are not possible until after the war ends.
The parliament noted on Tuesday that Zelenskyy was elected in legitimate elections and his mandate is not in doubt. It also said that no elections can be held until the lifting of martial law after the coming of a "just and lasting peace."
Zelenskyy was elected in a landslide in 2019, but his term expired last May. Ukraine is under martial law which under its constitution forbids the holding of elections.
Most Ukrainians, including major opposition parties, agree that holding credible elections now amidst the war is not possible because millions are abroad as refugees, hundreds of thousands are fighting.
Also, duh. trump administration was simply saying what putin wants it to say, per usual.
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LogGrad98
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Yes truth has to be reinforced with the ultimate pathological liar pushing false narratives to hurt people.
fishonjazz
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Consumer confidence plummeted in February, indicating worry about the direction of the U.S. economy under President Donald Trump.
A gauge of consumer confidence registered its largest monthly drop since August 2021, the nonpartisan Conference Board said on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the share of consumers who expect a recession within the next year surged to a nine-month high, the data showed. A growing portion of consumers believe the job market will worsen, the stock market will fall and interest rates will rise, the report added.
Earlier this month, Trump announced 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada as well as 10% tariffs on products from China.
Trump paused the tariffs on Mexico and Canada for one month after striking a deal with each of the two countries on drug trafficking and border security. On Monday, Trump said he plans to go forward with the tariffs when that pause lifts next week.
Seven of every 10 American adults believe tariffs will raise prices, an Ipsos survey found last week.
"Consumers who fear the impact of higher tariffs, spending cuts, and deportations are getting worried and are likely to be more cautious," Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank in Dallas, told ABC News.