Random Politics Thread

[The Cat]

Great. Slavery with more steps for the ND population.
What an utter piece of scum cuck.
​

 

[Totenkindly]

What a shitshow. This guy's such an amateur.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/us/politics/musk-cuts.html

An expert on the federal work force estimates that the speed and chaos of Mr. Musk’s cuts to the bureaucracy will cost taxpayers $135 billion this fiscal year.

And they only "saved" the US $150 billion, not $2 trillion.

So now you saved $15 billion and pretty much cost the nation far more than that in services they used to get only three months ago. Asshats. The damage is far worse than the "savings" + they killed incentive to work for fedgov for decades now. Oh yeah, and the $135 billion cost doesn't include the amount being spent to defend the government in court. Will they even break even, in the end?

President Trump and Elon Musk promised taxpayers big savings, maybe even a “DOGE dividend” check in their mailboxes, when the Department of Government Efficiency was let loose on the federal government. Now, as he prepares to step back from his presidential assignment to cut bureaucratic fat, Mr. Musk has said without providing details that DOGE is likely to save taxpayers only $150 billion.

That is about 15 percent of the $1 trillion he pledged to save, less than 8 percent of the $2 trillion in savings he had originally promised and a fraction of the nearly $7 trillion the federal government spent in the 2024 fiscal year.

The errors and obfuscations underlying DOGE’s claims of savings are well documented. Less known are the costs Mr. Musk incurred by taking what Mr. Trump called a “hatchet” to government and the resulting firings, agency lockouts and building seizures that mostly wound up in court.

The Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization that studies the federal work force, has used budget figures to produce a rough estimate that firings, re-hirings, lost productivity and paid leave of thousands of workers will cost upward of $135 billion this fiscal year. At the Internal Revenue Service, a DOGE-driven exodus of 22,000 employees would cost about $8.5 billion in revenue in 2026 alone, according to figures from the Budget Lab at Yale University. The total number of departures is expected to be as many as 32,000.

Neither of these estimates includes the cost to taxpayers of defending DOGE’s moves in court. Of about 200 lawsuits and appeals related to Mr. Trump’s agenda, at least 30 implicate the department.

“Not only is Musk vastly overinflating the money he has saved, he is not accounting for the exponentially larger waste that he is creating,” said Max Stier, the chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service. “He’s inflicted these costs on the American people, who will pay them for many years to come.”

Mr. Stier and other experts on the federal work force said it did not have to be this way. Federal law and previous government shutdowns offered Mr. Musk a legal playbook for reducing the federal work force, a goal that most Americans support. But Mr. Musk chose similar lightning-speed, blunt-force methods he used to drastically cut Twitter’s work force after he acquired the company in 2022.

The Internal Revenue Service building in Washington in February. An exodus of up to 22,000 of the agency’s employees will cost about $8.5 billion in revenue in 2026 alone, according to an estimate.

“The law is clear,” said Jeri Buchholz, who over three decades in public service handled hiring and firing at seven federal agencies, including NASA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. “They can do all the things they are currently doing, but they can’t do them the way they’re doing them. They can either start over and do it right, or they can be in court for forever.”

"Mr. Musk’s methods have cast a pall over the latest effort by an American president to trim the federal bureaucracy, as most Americans say they want. In congressional town halls and interviews, even Trump voters have said they are tired of Mr. Musk’s bloodletting. In a poll released this month, 58 percent of those surveyed said they disapproved of how Mr. Musk was handling DOGE’s work, and 60 percent disapproved of Mr. Musk himself."

---

For some reason, this is reminding me of my poor red maple sapling I had planted a few summers ago, to replace a large tree I had to remove.

Three weeks after it was planted, without the landscaper mentioning a thing or suggesting maybe that was a bad time to plant a sapling, the cyclic cicada wave hit. By the time I realized the problem and acquired bags to cover the tree, it had been ravaged by the cicadas (who like to chow down on young trees).

I considered just digging it up and getting a new one, because the damage was so severe. I stuck it out instead -- maybe because the next summer the little tree struggled ahead even though I had to prune the crap out of it due to all the dead portions.

Finally a few years later, despite the main shaft being dead, all the surrounding branches finally sprouted high enough to make it look full and growing, it's up to 6' finally and I think it's going to thrive.

That's how I feel about what just happened to fedgov. Musk ravaged the crap out of it and it's struggling to survive right now. But maybe, just maybe 5-10 years from now, with new leadership, maybe it will one day sprout again. But it will take love and work and energy and cost.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Trump Organization is selling 2028 hats


If this is true .....

 

[The Cat]

Trump Organization is selling 2028 hats


If this is true .....

If you buy three hats you get a free 8oz bottle of snake oil for a nominal fee.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Trump says Putin may not want to ‘stop the war’ in Ukraine


Of course he doesn't want to stop.
In 3 years he took only about 10% of Ukraine and now he controls about 20% of it. If he stops now the basically lost the war (even if we don't count sanctions and similar elements of the story).

 

[The Cat]

Trump says Putin may not want to ‘stop the war’ in Ukraine


Of course he doesn't want to stop.
In 3 years he took only about 10% of Ukraine and now he controls about 20% of it. If he stops now the basically lost the war (even if we don't count sanctions and similar elements of the story).

An ant problem you say, I may have noticed one or two signs now that you mention it...​

 

[Virtual ghost]

View attachment 32409
An ant problem you say, I may have noticed one or two signs now that you mention it...​

The problem is that at this point China and Russia are way too intermixed on all levels. Therefore there is no reason that Putin should stop now . Especially now when North Koreans, Syrians and various Africans are showing up at the front on his side. Not to mention hardware and money from China's satellites. Therefore this war is about one block of countries trying to conquer the country that has very high strategic value. What means that this is much much wider story than just Russia. In a sense this is WW3 concentrated on the soil of one country. However due to intensity it is spilling more and more into everything else.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Russia claims complete ‘liberation’ of Kursk, admits North Korea assistance

This is from today.

 

[Totenkindly]

This is exactly correct as far as the "reassignments to front-line positions" go for SSA.

People really don't understand that these are underpaid, complex jobs due to laws and policy surrounding benefits claims.

Employees are not actually universally fungible in this direction, as much as you can't take front-line claims reps and move them to Systems (which would take time as well to build up systems knowledge). The people who will do well quickly are those who already moved from the front lines INTO HQ positions -- but that was because it's hugely beneficial to have people with a wealth of claims background to bring that knowledge to policy, user support, and systems even if they have a learning curve for their new roles.

We are basically watching them destroy the ability of Social Security benefits to be paid, so they can then try to privatize it somehow.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Trump wants free pass for US ships in Panama, Suez canals

 

[Red Herring]

 

[SensEye]

There's an unstated assumption in that '1361 days to go' headline that the institutions of democracy will still hold in the USA in 2028. One would hope so, but there are early warning signs this may not turn out to be the case.

Trump is already floating the concept of a 3rd term. He already tries to ignore the constitution whenever he feels like it. He is starting to signal he might ignore the judiciary. He as already confirmed he will ignore election results (i.e. he still claims the 2020 election was stolen).

 

[Coriolis]

There's an unstated assumption in that '1361 days to go' headline that the institutions of democracy will still hold in the USA in 2028. One would hope so, but there are early warning signs this may not turn out to be the case.

Trump is already floating the concept of a 3rd term. He already tries to ignore the constitution whenever he feels like it. He is starting to signal he might ignore the judiciary. He as already confirmed he will ignore election results (i.e. he still claims the 2020 election was stolen).

Even if those institutions do not "hold" until the end of Trump's term, we are in a much better position than many other nations for when autocracy/oligarchy is eventually ousted, and it will be, sooner or later. Unlike nations like Russia itself, we do have a long tradition of democracy to draw upon at that time. Look even at Germany. For much of US history it was still ruled by a monarch, but was able to recover well after the fall of the Nazis. Sure, allies helped with alot of economic investment, but democracy requires the will of the people to sustain, and that is certainly present.

 

[SensEye]

That's true, and I certainly hope when push comes to shove, Americans will stand up for their democracy. I would council against complacency though. Hence my comment about an unstated assumption, as I would like to see more concern about this in the media already, so as to raise awareness if Trump really goes to the dark side.

For example, this 3rd term bullshit should not just be waved aside as typical Trump hyperbole. The feedback should be so extremely negative he is scared to even joke about it. That's not happening, at least not yet.

 

[Coriolis]

That's true, and I certainly hope when push comes to shove, Americans will stand up for their democracy. I would council against complacency though. Hence my comment about an unstated assumption, as I would like to see more concern about this in the media already, so as to raise awareness if Trump really goes to the dark side.

For example, this 3rd term bullshit should not just be waved aside as typical Trump hyperbole. The feedback should be so extremely negative he is scared to even joke about it. That's not happening, at least not yet.

You are right about complacency. If nothing else, the excesses of Trump's administration should awaken many people to the need to take action. Trump is already on the dark side, and always has been. That comes from being in it only for himself, which leaves him open to being used by folks like the Project 2025 crowd.

 

[Virtual ghost]

From what I understand soon we should know how Canada voted.

I am quite curious to see what will come out of this.

 

[Virtual ghost]

The unlikely election of Prime Minister Mark Carney

EU cheers Mark Carney’s election win in Canada


So here is the answer to my question.

 

[Totenkindly]

With so little good news lately, I've been LMFAO'ing over this -- Trump managing to lose an election for another country's conservative party.

I hope the snowball keeps rolling.

 

[Virtual ghost]

With so little good news lately, I've been LMFAO'ing over this -- Trump managing to lose an election for another country's conservative party.

I hope the snowball keeps rolling.

For another election like this we have to wait next Sunday to be exact.

MAGA man leads the field before Romanian election rerun

“We are the natural allies of the Republican Party and we’re almost perfectly aligned ideologically with the MAGA movement,” Simion said, referring to his party, the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR).

He will probably win the first round, but in the run off 2 weeks later he has a problem. Since right now he has 29% in the polls and mainstream candidates have round 50%. It is still unclear who will be mainstream's exact choice but mainstream will evidently stand behind one person in the end. Because the stakes are too high. The remaining 20% belongs to various outsiders that don't really have a shoot.

In other words before Trump coming back people like these had a shoot, while now their odds are much more slim.

 

[SensEye]

With so little good news lately, I've been LMFAO'ing over this -- Trump managing to lose an election for another country's conservative party.

I hope the snowball keeps rolling.

What's weird is, Trump is bragging about it. He really just cares about showing how much of an influence he is, even if it proves him unpopular.

Dark days for Canada though, our economy is going to go even farther down the toilet under more Liberal deficit spending.