Turning On The Giant Faucet Of Bullshit - US Politics February 2025

Only 28 Days this time...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/health/malaria-tb-hiv-trump-aid-pause-.html?unlocked_article_code=1.tk4.aapH.JXibpQybi3JW&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Lifesaving health initiatives and medical research projects have shut down around the world in response to the Trump administration’s 90-day pause on foreign aid and stop-work orders.

In Uganda, the National Malaria Control Program has suspended spraying insecticide into village homes and ceased shipments of bed nets for distribution to pregnant women and young children, said Dr. Jimmy Opigo, the program’s director.

Medical supplies, including drugs to stop hemorrhages in pregnant women and rehydration salts that treat life-threatening diarrhea in toddlers, cannot reach villages in Zambia because the trucking companies transporting them were paid through a suspended supply project of the United States Agency for International Development, U.S.A.I.D.

Dozens of clinical trials in South Asia, Africa and Latin America have been suspended. Thousands of people enrolled in the studies have drugs, vaccines and medical devices in their bodies but no longer have access to continuing treatment or to the researchers who were supervising their care.

Grisso/McCain:

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/ultimatepopculture/images/e/e4/28_days_later.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/250?cb=20190320185838

Good afternoon!

https://assets-prd.ignimgs.com/2024/01/11/twenty-eight-days-later-ver2-button-1704982369363.jpg

Not yet figured out Bluesky links on my phone, but just saw that NTSB will only be sending out communications via X now - no emails, no other form of communication.

this all feels so blatantly illegal

Yeah Donald’s justice department should do something about it

Xp Well that’s one way to keep his shitty website alive

So apparently any FBI agent that had anything to do with investigating January 6 is going to be fired... which is about 6000 agents, out of a total force of under 14,000.

Planning an interstate crime spree? Might as well get on that, since the FBI is gonna be operating at half strength for quite a while, given that the Office of Personnel Management (HR for the government) is being destroyed, too.

Re the HIV, TB, and Malaria stuff posted above, the Rubio con job mentioned in there is also disgusting--

On Tuesday night, Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued an exemption to the funding freeze for “lifesaving humanitarian assistance,” including what a State Department memo called “core lifesaving medicine.” However, shuttered H.I.V. and tuberculosis treatment programs have been told by their contacts at U.S.A.I.D. that they cannot resume work until they receive written instruction that the waiver applies specifically to them.

Also on Tuesday, a federal judge blocked the freeze until Feb. 3. But in practice, most U.S.A.I.D. country offices and programs are proceeding as if the freeze remains in place.

They have been unable to obtain clarification on whether and when their work can continue because their assigned contacts at U.S.A.I.D. have either been fired or furloughed, or are under strict instructions to not talk to anyone.

Planning an interstate crime spree? Might as well get on that,

One my my only consolations as we get closer to tax season is my assumption that no one will be looking too closely at my return.

Trump just fired Chopra the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

https://apnews.com/article/trump-chopra-consumer-financial-protection-bureau-47b6b39d0eff05ea0c9bca4eacf55b79

Replacing political appointees from a previous administration with your own appointees is standard operating practice. It's expected. What's insane is how Trump's taken so many actions to decapitate the federal government and bring everything to a screeching halt with zero regard for the repercussions. It's the psychology of a mass shooter, not a political leader.

i hope i'm wrong but i dont see how this isn't gonna lead to a massive crash very soon. gutting half the federal government and replacing the rest with extremely unqualified cronies, i don't think they can pull off too much of what they're gunning for but i do think they can very effectively torpedo this country's superpower status

gutting half the federal government and replacing the rest with extremely unqualified cronies, i don't think they can pull off too much of what they're gunning for but i do think they can very effectively torpedo this country's superpower status

Yeah, firing half the government and only afterwards trying to do stuff like hire thousands of ICE and customs agents with nobody around to a) process the applications or b) requisition/procure equipment, never mind c) issue equipment to new people doesn't seem like a very workable plan. Like, who sets up all the laptops now? Who makes sure everything is logged properly and secure and trackable? Or is "the government" (aka one of the 25-year-old morons Trump keeps around) just gonna call up Best Buy and say, send over 500 laptops we can use for military/law enforcement stuff?

This is when they start contracting the work out to private companies who give them kickbacks

^ ^ ^

One my my only consolations as we get closer to tax season is my assumption that no one will be looking too closely at my return.

Being in a blue state is not going to save you.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/nyregion/nyu-langone-hospital-trans-care-youth.html?unlocked_article_code=1.tk4.atPC.Y024lzDeaf8r&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

A leading New York City hospital system has begun canceling appointments for transgender children following President Trump’s executive order threatening to withhold federal funding to hospitals that provide gender-affirming treatments, according to the children’s parents.

The hospital system, NYU Langone Health, has not made any public announcements. But word spread among parents of trans children after the hospital canceled appointments for two 12-year-olds who had been scheduled to receive implants that dispense puberty-blocking medication.

The father of one of the children said his child’s doctor had told him that because of “the new administration” — a reference to Mr. Trump’s executive order — the hospital would not able to proceed with the procedure. The child had been due on Thursday to have a small device that would release Supprelin LA, a puberty-blocking medication, implanted in the upper arm. The father said the doctor suggested that they try calling other hospital systems in New York City or one the doctor recommended in Philadelphia.

waiting for Surgeon General Dr. Phil to outlaw medicine and replace with a regimen of tough love and boot camp

Replacing political appointees from a previous administration with your own appointees is standard operating practice. It's expected. What's insane is how Trump's taken so many actions to decapitate the federal government and bring everything to a screeching halt with zero regard for the repercussions. It's the psychology of a mass shooter, not a political leader.

I was replying to:

Trump just fired Chopra the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

hope u guys like stagflation

black market chickens, gigacock eggz brah

Canada has announced 25% tariffs on US imports effective this week.

Also pulling products from red states off shelves where they can

At least all those Democrats tried to block Rubio’s confirmation.

Oh, wait. Not a single fucking one did. Even Bernie Sanders is fine with that asshole

my province NS is removing all american alcohol from its liquor stores. all liquor stores are owned by the province so that's effectively a ban.

What’s the over/under on another Great Depression? 6 months?

American liquor is shit, anyway. Except for maybe my Mr. Black espresso martini mix

people are gonna buy up all the moosehead...

American liquor is shit, anyway.

Do you ever tire of being the most wrong, acerbic asshole on this board?

Canadian beer is like moonshine

No, I don’t tire of it. It’s so easy to annoy thin-skinned idiots who spend too much time here like you

Beer makes you fat. Why would I want to be fat like you yanks?

Pictures, plz.

Can we ban this dickhead already?

Adding to the "federal employees are getting abused" posts, a friend of mine almost replied to one of those ghoulish emails about their job status with both the video where both Don and Jeffrey Epstein are pointing at underage girls, and several pics of Elmo Muskrat before his own gender-affirming surgery on his scalp and chin (I throw no shade at people who choose such options, only at transphobic fucksticks). She refrained. But maybe we all should just flood every fucking social media platform with those!

table otm

table OTM

jinx!

I don't even drink anymore but I will not hear this Tito's slander. It's cheap without burning and makes people more palatable.

amen

table otm

flagged

Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s office has received “many, many” calls about trans people’s struggles to update their passports in the last two weeks, a source familiar with the issue told The Standard Friday.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Jan. 20 declaring that the U.S. government would recognize only two sexes. The order also bars people from changing their gender on federal documents.

Nevada Nubes, a trans person who lives in the Mission, said the passport agency denied their request to update their name and issue a new passport showing their gender as X, citing the executive order.

Nubes said they mailed in their passport Jan. 24 to update their name, which they recently legally changed.

“They said they could only give me my passport with my updated name, and then my gender that was assigned to me at birth,” Nubes said. But the office later said it couldn’t even do that. “They’re holding my documents, and I’m not able to travel.”

When Nubes asked for the old passport back, the office was unable to produce it. As a result, they had to cancel a Friday flight to Mexico to visit a friend who is dying of AIDS.

https://sfstandard.com/2025/01/31/trans-passport-gender-donald-trump-executive-order/

The entire system for applying/renewing/replacing passports appears to be down since yesterday: "Passport Application System is undergoing maintenance".

I'm sure its fine

F.A.A.’s Main Warning System for Pilots Is Down, U.S. Official Says

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/us/notam-outage-faa-alerts.html

probably nothing....

Musk was interviewed live on stage at CPAC today and I'm pretty sure his pupils were the size of the giant glaucoma-patient sunglasses he had on. The motherfucker could not finish a sentence. I hope he dies very soon, and I don't think that's an unreasonable wish given his apparent lifestyle choices.

i've definitely been hearing some regurgitated Fox stuff from Trump voters: federal workers are almost universally lazy if they even bother showing up at all, most of them donated to Harris, and also that there's a lot of lazy young American men who can be forced to work the chicken processing plants and asphalt laying crews, they just need motivation

it's worth paying a little attention to

Most of those talking points are recycled trash talk Republican used against the New Deal during the Depression. Just like anti-immigrant trash talk got started by the Know-Nothings even before the US Civil War and hasn't changed much since, except shifting the target from Irish, Poles and Italian Catholics to anyone brown-skinned from Latin America.

The conservative worldview relies on contempt for labor, and to sustain that they have to pretend that workers are lazy, shiftless cheats who require a firm hand from a strong daddy. Slaveholders used the same rhetoric.

I’m hoping musk has a private doc giving him OR-grade anaesthetics like mj, a doctor who is only human and fallible

Paging Dr. Spaceman.

Federal agency cuts: The I.R.S. began laying off more than 6,000 employees. The C.I.A. is moving to dismiss an unspecified number of officers working on recruiting and diversity issues, according to former officials, in what could be one of the largest mass firings in the agency’s history. The Transportation Security Administration fired 243 probationary employees. Four agencies were ordered to reduce their work and personnel to the minimum required by law. And an arm of the Housing and Urban Development Department that helps rebuild homes after disasters is set to cut more than 80 percent of its staff.

it's almost more of a standing ruling, judge telling the unions that this is not a district court kinda case

Here's where we reflect that the nation elected a television personality whose catchphrase was "you're fired"

I was thinking about the Nat Park layoffs and wondering why they were ok with that given Trump not long ago had his big sook about how California wasnt "raking the forest floors" enough or whatever poop dribble that was.

And then I had a cold thought. They can just do what is already done but at a larger scale - use incarcerated firefighters. And whats stopping them from using unpaid prison labor to replace anything else theyre cutting?

Maybe I need to just stop reading the news because this all seems so fucking mental.

wasn't that his entire tired schtick? "You're Fired!"

clearly not tired of his own schtick

Bye bye USPS. It was nice while it lasted.

No wonder Bezos was so cozy with him.

I was just thinking about that punter’s speech vs Obama laughing at a Trump joke at Carter’s funeral and how we have been completely let down by democrats in that they can’t really model what an opposition to something like this looks like. In fact almost no one with a platform seems up for displaying what a righteous protest looks like. It’s just crickets out there. So good for a former nfl punter for using what he had

xp Prime Members get mail every day, the rest of us twice a month

re: the USPS thing, I remember when DeJoy was appointed head of governors or whatever, and I was like 'why doesn't Biden just fire him?' And everyone was like 'No, no, he has to be replaced by the board'... bloody hell, why doesn't Trump just fire Justice Sotomayor at this point? Seems like no one would even blink an eye

the Hard Times headline i saw on FB doesn't seem far from the truth:

Democrats Announce Bold Plan to Resist Trump Policies by Playing Katy Perry’s “Roar” Really Loud

ah cool we got a Sieg Heil from Bannon today

Bannon I'm unsurprised about, he did it so hald-assedly and with a smirk that it was clear he was trolling.

This crypto story tells you also how the failure to prosecute bankers in '08 planted seeds for this future we are all on.

NEW: The crypto industry could cause a 2008 style economic crash.

After spending $130 million on the 2024 elections, the industry won every seat it invested in.

Now, they're getting the policies they want — and that could mean economic disaster for the rest of us. pic.twitter.com/TGxRy3gCtI

— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) February 20, 2025

I saw a dumb algorithm-boosted post today that repeated the $5000 "DOGE dividend" idea they pulled out of their collective ass, but made reference to it being distributed in dogecoin. I can't tell if it's just an A.I. hallucination or if Musk is sowing deliberate confusion on this point to pump up a memecoin. What a time to be alive!

“I’m in close contact with the CDC. They have about what, 13,000 employees, 13,000 employees at the CDC. In the last couple years, those probationary people, which is about 10% of their employee base, about 1,300 people, which you’re referring to. A lot of the work they do is duplicitous with AI,” McCormick said. The mention of AI led to “no’s” and murmurs from the crowd, leading the Republican representative to say, “I happen to be a doctor. I know a few things.”

duplicitous

Freud also happened to be a doctor

Ha, not two minutes ago I read this: https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/21/politics/rich-mccormick-georgia-trump/index.html

taps the sign, yet again:

“A Nazi salute done ironically is still a Nazi salute.”

Bannon is on the outs in magaworld. Elon’s faction is in.

I’m fine with them going out there and talking about a $5k check, because when no one gets it people are going to be pissed.

Bannon is on the outs in magaworld. Elon’s faction is in.

― treeship 2, Friday, February 21, 2025 9:20 AM (fifty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lucky for us they are both doing nazi salutes

But only one of them could finance his own army

Senator Ron Wyden‬ ✧@wy✧✧✧.sen✧✧✧.g✧✧‬
·
10h
Just offered an amendment that would block all cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and the ACA. Not a single one of you will be surprised to hear that Republicans blocked it.

Dem Senator Wyden on Bluesky during the night

At what point do even the GOP members of Congress realize he's trying to render them worthless and their ride is over too? Do they have enough set up to line their pockets that they don't give a shit?

They are all angling to be his successor. I expect half the GOP to turn on Vance after the midterms.

Plenty of them are happy to continue to play congress to keep up appearances of a democracy.

Passage of the Senate plan now puts pressure on the GOP-controlled House, which plans to take up its own competing budget resolution next week. In addition to money for the border, defense and energy, that version also includes a $4.5 trillion tax cut and a $4 trillion debt limit hike.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senate-vote-a-rama-advance-budget-trump-agenda-rcna192893

I've seen some small signs in the last 24 hours of republican reps openly grumbling about Trump sidestepping the legislative process

We've had nearly a decade of the Republicans ceding all of their power to Trump, and their punishment has been...winning control of all branches of government.

Bannon is on the outs in magaworld. Elon’s faction is in

And the existence of both, like the kerfuffle over H1Bs, is sometimes used by online Republicans as a talking point, like "See? We're not a brainwashed cult, we disagree sometimes."

I dunno man, who cares, I have room in my heart to hate both of them

I also feel like slashing the health care for 9/11 first responders would be one of those things that rile up the GOP but we are in this brave new world and the Repubs are all, "fuck them helpers".

honest q! where are "online republicans"? how do you take the temperature of online republicans? is that people yelling in facebook sections? is it the wall street journal op-ed section? is it people in rural diners who are afraid of "the city" (who are online in the sense of forwarding racist all caps emails from 2011)?

is it teenage crypto bros? for real, my sense is that teen (boys in particular) that are into gaming (so many of them) are by default into online gaming, and some of the very worst people in the entire planet are targeting them with crypto/alt-right propaganda from pretty much the second they start to game with the 'real world' instead of just their friends

these GOP reps are not going to last long if this is the kind of response they are getting

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lip67gehcs2b

when asked "what are you going to do about Trump's tyranny?" McCormick compares it to when Biden was elected and compares the angry town hall to Jan 6 rioters, the people were not pleased

While it is encouraging to see Republicans get mocked, jeered , and questioned at public events, I think a Republican rep like McCormick has a large MAGA base that just didn't turn out for that town hall because they're happy with what they hear on Fox and X

Z_, I tend to go by

https://www.reddit.com/r/t5_3cr3o/s/wXj8XAWcTH

https://www.reddit.com/r/t5_2s5s2/s/ZBGB2o8FlY

(r/askpolitics and r/asktrumpsupporters)

ah, thanks ymp! i was gonna say, for some reason those links don't work for me, but i can track down those subreddits, thanks

Justice Dept. to Drop Discrimination Case Against Elon Musk’s SpaceX

The Justice Department had sued SpaceX in 2023, accusing the company of violating federal law by refusing to hire refugees and people granted asylum in the United States.

No surprise here. NY Times article just gives the "facts" with no mention of Musk's role in government or his huge fiscal donations to the Trump campaign.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/us/politics/spacex-elon-musk-discrimination-doj.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

The J6 Prison Choir is going to perform at the Kennedy Center. As far as I know, they only know one song, so suggestions for additional repertoire? I feel like they should do a medley of "I Shall Be Released" and "Tomorrow Belongs To Me".

"Gonna Rock this Town"?

That's gonna be a hot ticket for people who live & work in the DC Metro area

https://shorturl.at/nenYC