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

2+2=5

Republicans have talked about it for years but they’ve never had the votes for it (because for whatever reason abolishing the Department of Education sounds bad to people). But it can’t be deleted in a tweet.

yeah its plain to me that trump just wants a "head of state" role this time and dgaf about the rest of it. in his first term he clearly assumed thats all that being the president meant, and was massively frustrated and disappointed to discover that there was more to it than that and he was expected/required to do things. not this time.

― waste of compute (One Eye Open), Friday, February 7, 2025 4:27 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I have a very different read

Project 2025 *is* the Trump agenda. The point is to purge the government of disloyal elements and build a dictatorship.

don't forget selling everyone else out for personal gain, along the way

Right. I see Doge as just project 2025 on doublespeed. Gut it all as fast as possible, before anyone had a chance to stop them.

Still waiting for Trump's future best selling book where he lays all this out very clearly, The Audacity of Crime.

A figurehead tv president wouldn’t be as ambitious as he has been… or take on so much personal risk by breaking the law constantly for nine years

He is going for a big prize

From a Facebook acquaintance:

"I always get my social security direct deposit on the first Wednesday of every month, without exception. Not this month though. Still waiting. WTF?"

If that is going on we will hear more about it soon enough

the mini-Musks have to okay every single payment, might take a while

Gotta feel like Social Security payments not coming through has to be a tipping point.

Am I misremembering, or was it Musk who threw out that insane, "we'll save money by cutting off the SSNs that end in odd numbers" plan?

Trump declared today that they need to look at social security because a lot of it is going to "illegal immigrants" (obv, that is completely false).

Thsi is the schedule for SS payments, it doesn't look like the first wednesday of the month is part of the schedule so that acquaintance may be mistaken.

https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10031-2025.pdf

social security is going to hamas condoms

'Condoms For Hamas' should be a song in the new Team America musical

He's also apparently signing an executive order to bring back plastic straws.

To be fair, I support banning paper straws, and I'm as left as it gets.

the Krazy Straw industry has powerful lobbyists up there

They suck

There are better eco friendly alternatives to plastic straws. The agave fiber straws.

I think this is what they mean by not chasing every squirrel

what happened to making all the documents on the JFK/RFK/MLK assassinations public?

this is one of my all-time lol memes when i first saw it: https://ifunny.co/video/the-liberal-leaving-my-body-when-my-straw-starts-to-xP60XPbEA

Do not. Forget. Your dying. King.

Am I misremembering, or was it Musk who threw out that insane, "we'll save money by cutting off the SSNs that end in odd numbers" plan?

― Maxmillion D. Boosted (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Friday, February 7, 2025 5:54 PM (thirty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

That was Vivek Ramaswamy's proposal to randomly purge the Federal workforce: https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/video-shows-ramaswamy-discussing-cut-federal-workforce-not-social-security-2024-11-26/.

I haven't heard that name recently; did he run afoul of Elmo?

He is running for governor of ohio apparently

So these much publicized usaid payments apparently were public information already.

The republicans are acting like elon exposed some hidden trove of payments

lolz, Trump just revoked Biden's security clearance.

I’m waiting for the executive order that says Biden lost in 2020

I haven't heard that name recently; did he run afoul of Elmo?

Charlemagne the God confronted him about this, but Vivek said no, no, they're all still pals, just wanted to try out something new.. but it seems clear he was forced out, DOGE isn't big enough for both of them

We’re about a week away from a “Biden sucks” executive order.

I thought ILX wrote it in 2021??

to be fair, I think Biden suggested that Trump no longer need post-WH intelligence briefings since he's an erratic idiot

Trump says he will fire Kennedy Center board members, appoint himself chairman

"My name is kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiid......."

Kash Patel was paid by Russian filmmaker with Kremlin ties, documents show

"President Trump’s nominee to be FBI director was paid $25,000 last year by a film company that had promoted anti-Western views advanced by the Kremlin, documents show."

Kash Patel was paid by Russian filmmaker with Kremlin

that sounds like the minimum ante to get in on this administration - no ties to Kremlin, no job

A former employer of mine is in the news for losing 390ish people to the USAID dogepurge.

I worked with dozens of those people (not closely, it was two weeks two years ago). These were global health experts like specialists in cholera, AIDS, typhoid and other minor inconveniences to the regime.

Interestingly they were almost all former feds who were moved over as a group to the private sector explicitly to keep doing their old jobs, but on contract. The reason was unclear, but I gather the company was hired as a way to onboard and employ these specific experts. Now one wonders if the result of that contract was that they were easier to fire.

Amy Siskind on Bluesky: “As of this afternoon, after the initial deadlines for Musk's buyout offer, just 65,000 have taken the offer, roughly 3% of employees, far lower than Musk's estimate of five to 10%. In a typical year, roughly 150,000 federal employees retire.”

NIH funding cut to the bone; med schools and universities are fucked.

Court blocked the USAID cuts though, curious to see if they simply ignore the court.

Bleak as fuck, to be sure. Though, aiui, like many other things, that requires congressional approval so it will most likely get blocked for now. Still, depressing and scary.

'Condoms For Hamas' should be a song in the new Team America musical

If you don’t want more Hamas isn’t keeping them from reproducing good?

I guess I must be dumb cause you had packages for Hamas/ Trojans and some of them used

Not to derail, but why the hell did she have used trojans in her pocket? Seems kind of icky, throw that shit out.

Hoarder probably