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956 Worldwide

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Everything posted by 956 Worldwide

  1. FEMA is there to coordinate and oversee the federal response and money. Cutting it out doesn’t mean the federal benefits go away. It means the money goes right to these red-state governors to misdirect and misuse. The point is to reduce oversight and accountability.
  2. It’s also not executive, it’s legislative. DOGE can’t go at it.
  3. And (I hate to quote myself)- I would expect the EO declaring an “invasion” from the southern border to be part of the arguments as this shakes out.
  4. This applies, but gets very complicated depending on what exact visa and state the parents are on and which portions of the Vienna Convention privileges and immunities they are extended.
  5. It’s very sound argument and would also include children born to an invading foreign army and their camp followers. One of the issues with trying to retcon the 14th is that “illegal immigrant” was not a concept at the time.
  6. CRS is a little-known gem of the government. It’s got to be surreal working for them. All these smart and great researchers engaged in the Sisyphean task of producing nuanced and thoughtful analyses for idiots who will promptly ignore it.
  7. Doublethink is to know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed.
  8. When Holbrooke had to find a place worse than war-torn 1990s Yugoslavia to force the Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats to make a peace deal so they could leave, he made them all go to Dayton.
  9. lol, of course it’s this poster trying to toss this ball of yarn out.
  10. Here’s a real life example of what the EOs are doing. The federal hiring freeze means that if there is a vacancy at the (famously well-funded and staffed already) VA, it’s not getting filled. Something to remember as Hesgeth is touted as proof of how much we will take care of “warriors.”
  11. The bear is going to make mincemeat of the gorilla. The gorilla’s thumbs and smarts are not helpful, gorillas are not trained martial artists and they are going to react by trying to use brute strength. Bears are not vulnerable in the way humans are and have skulls and bones designed to weather kicks from full grown moose (which they prey on). A large brown bear is the world’s biggest terrestrial predator in a dead heat with polar bears. If you don’t have the size of a rhino, elephant, or hippo you’re going down. This is a physics problem, basically.
  12. The goal of the name change is the same as all language warfare. To inject politics into daily life and turn it into a place for more running battles and opportunities to either demonstrate solidarity or be noted as an opponent. We are channeling Bolsheviks on this, it’s very Marxist.
  13. The Office of Personnel Management is shutting down all DEI programs and putting employees on administrative leave in preparation for a Reduction in Force. We can argue that, and have opinions, but the fact is that absent a ruling or act of Congress, this is something within the executive’s power to do and this executive told people he would do it. The disturbing part here is Annex I. It directs ALL employees— whether they worked on DEI or not— to rat out colleagues who have been and who lawfully and within the scope of directions might have reframed DEI activities in advance of the new admin. It promises no consequences for reporting but adverse consequences if you were aware but do not. This is Soviet shit. Placing the onus of reporting on everyone, introducing vague consequences that can be dangled over everyone’s head, direct people to find your political enemies for you rather than doing the bureaucratic work yourself. This is dark, and it’s normalizing repressive behavior. This is not asking employees to have an affirmative duty to report law breaking or security risks or violations of rules. https://chcoc.gov/sites/default/files/OPM Memo Initial Guidance Regarding DEIA Executive Orders.pdf
  14. Congrats, you are not a libertarian and you are here with normal people having a pragmatic discussion on how to use politics and compromise to balance citizens’ competing rights and interests while ensuring the protection of core civil and human rights against majority overreach. We call that being a Liberal.
  15. EL OH FUCKING EL at Anastasis expressing Big Concern that there are violent, expansionist, authoritarian nationalists afoot in Eastern Europe after his shameful stance on Ukraine. Total fucking clown post from a total fucking clown. Go back to being dumb about Fauci.
  16. All of the arguments we have boil down to what it means to infringe upon rights and whose rights are favored. An example that isn’t politically loaded: 1. Surely you would say that I have a right to enjoy German polka music. In fact, I have a right to enjoy German polka music at any time I prefer. And I should be able to listen at any volume I prefer. 2. But maybe you live next door and want to have the right to not listen to blaring German polka at all hours of the night. And you can’t do that during my Wednesday night German polka rave. Neither one of us are morally wrong. Both of us have legitimate claims to be exercising our rights. We are going to have to introduce a referee with the power to enforce standards and compromises. We can do this the normal way, with a government. Or the stupid libertarian way which will end with us arming an HOA and claiming it’s not a government because we don’t call it that.
  17. Definitionally, you wander into a contradiction because the existence of equality before “the law” and civil rights requires some form of authority and power (whether state or otherwise) to secure those things and so being for one while opposing the other is incoherent. There are three ways to reconcile this contradiction: 1. Become an inveterate contrarian asshole who accepts the need for some state power and authority but constantly whines that the state can’t get the fine-tuning PERFECTLY right and therefore the whole exercise is illegitimate. 2. Become an insufferable undergrad or online pseudo intellectual and prattle about how “private enterprise” or “anarchy-libertarianism” gets you out of this contradiction. 3. Become a sovereign citizen loon. This is really the most honest and at least entertaining option.
  18. Imagine being a grown-up with a job and a retirement account and identifying as a libertarian. So embarrassing.
  19. I don’t think public diplomacy would be part of this as it’s a different type of funding than development aided. PEPFAR, food aid, health, absolutely. But we pulled out of the WHO.
  20. You should be able to kick someone’s ass for this type of thing. The only thing you should have to put at stake would be the other guy maybe kicking your ass, but the law should be neutral.
  21. The EO specifies development assistance which is pretty precise. USAID is going to get whacked but military aid should not. Up in the air for economic assistance sent to Ukraine via the supplemental funding package.
  22. The bear cleans up. Even if it’s a regular grizzly he’s twice as massive as the lion or gorilla, if it’s a Kodiak or Kamchatka bear it’s three times the mass. The bear has thicker skin and is stronger than all of them.
  23. These ships are stupid expensive to maintain as a museum and there are too many of them to support as tourist attractions. Brownsville does nearly all of the Navy’s ship recycling and the JFK will be the sixth carrier. Good jobs for the region and it’s being done safely. It’s kind of a cool industry to have and if you time it right you can see lots of interesting floating history coming through.
  24. Renaming the Gulf of Mexico deeply bothers me. I know, it seems like small potatoes. But it’s a deeply totalitarian move. It is more than just dumb, it’s an attempt to demonstrate the power to change maps, to upend language and usage, and to take over our daily speech and geography.
  25. Also in a moment of enthusiasm, he awkwardly tried to get a far-right nationalist party elected in Germany. We realize how this looks!
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