temporary guest Edmund Burke
2 hours ago edited
I recall, when Bill Clinton was president, I got two calls from pollsters wanting to know if I thought character was an issue in an American president. I answered with a quote that I had heard attributed to Fletcher Christian in the movie, "Mutiny On The Bounty" (I have never seen the movie) ... The quote, Fletcher Christian to Captain Blythe, "Sir, if honor abides not in the captain of the ship, it is not on board".

Another quote, if I remember correctly, from G.S. Weaver, D.D. in his book, "The Lives And Graves Of Our Presidents" published by Elder Publishing Company, Chicago, in 1888: "No nation will ever be stronger than the virtues of it's men".

The fact that so many folks just don't seem to notice, understand or give a rip any more about such things as honor, decency, fidelity, loyalty and personal integrity doesn't change the fundamental realities of life. Character Matters. It always will. The lack of it does not negate that truth; it only demonstrates a weakening rot within men, and their nations.

Department of Government Efficiency
@DOGE
·
Follow
In 2020-2021, SBA granted 5,593 loans for $312M to borrowers whose only listed owner was 11 years old or younger at the time of the loan. While it is possible to have business arrangements where this is legal, that is highly unlikely for these 5,593 loans, as they all also used… Show more
Department of Government Efficiency
@DOGE
In 2020-2021, @SBAgov issued 3,095 loans, including PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) and EIDL (Economic Injury Disaster Loan), for $333M to borrowers over 115 years old who were still marked as alive in the Social Security database.

In one case, a 157 years old individual received $36k in loans.
4:10 AM · Mar 9, 2025. //

While it is possible to have business arrangements where this is legal, that is highly unlikely for these 5,593 loans, as they all also used an SSN with the incorrect name.

@DOGE and @SBAgov are working together to solve this problem this week. //

ShowMeGrl/Maybe Maybe Not Steve351C
4 hours ago
Bingo! I think that's where ActBlue has been getting its illicit funds - that and overseas dark money. I guarantee Soros didn't spend one penny of his own money, the money he's spent came through his bogus foundations which has been funded by USAID. I've also noticed that the rent-a-crowds have disappeared too. //

polyjunkie
5 hours ago
It is almost certain that these fraudulent loans ended up with some funding going to the Democrat party. In any event, the Democrats have overseen the greatest waste of taxpayer funds in the history of the galaxy.

The Danish postal service has said it will deliver its last letter at the end of this year, instead focusing on packages to respond to changing forms of communication.

PostNord said on Thursday it would cut 1,500 jobs in Denmark and remove 1,500 red postboxes, citing the “increasing digitalisation” of society.

The company, formed in 2009 in a merger of the Swedish and Danish postal services, is owned by the Danish and Swedish states in a respective 40:60 split. Letter distribution in Sweden would not be affected, it said.

The Danish postal service has been responsible for delivering letters in the country since 1624, but since 2000 the number of letters has declined by more than 90%, it said.

PostNord Denmark will deliver its last letter on 30 December.

The TSA has no legal right to organize, but negotiations were opened with the AFGE to represent TSA screeners in June 2021. The agreement was signed in March 2024.

As an aside, on social media, you routinely read comments to the effect that federal employee unions were created in 1962 by John F. Kennedy's Executive Order 10988, and all that is needed to abolish them is to repeal that order. That is utter nonsense. While the Kennedy executive order did open the door, the right of federal employees was codified by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (P.L. 95-454), which you can find at 5 USC 71.

This is undoubtedly headed for court because AFGE can't afford to cede this ground without a fight. Because the TSA union does not have Title 5 recognition, the administration will prevail in the end, but we can count on leftist judges to slow things down along the way.

One could argue that Arizona Senator and 1964 Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater was the pre-Reagan. He was one of the early champions of today's conservatism, of small government and low taxes. He famously said:

“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is "needed" before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' "interests," I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.”. //

“Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” Ronald Reagan famously said. No doubt he believed it.

Donald Trump is doing something about it. //

Ron Paul has been happy about this. On February 7, he wrote glowingly, “DOGE is ripping through the federal government like a tornado. This morning it has been reported that DOGE sent out firing notices to 9,400 USAID employees, leaving only 611.”

“Democratic politicians are furious, of course. But we hope that when it’s all said and done, ALL politicians, Democrat AND Republican, are furious with DOGE,” he added.

“Then we will know that it was a job well done for the American people.”

The point is not about Donald Trump, and the meaning of the moment is much larger than most of the reporting suggests. The claim that it’s outrageous, unprecedented, and a crisis to fire flag officers is laughable. It’s also dangerous and threatens to reduce civilian control of the military if the premise is accepted at all. If it’s an illegitimate act for President Donald Trump to fire senior military officers, then it’s illegitimate for presidents to fire senior military officers — all presidents. It means that anyone who wears stars on his or her collar is somehow untouchable, a member of a protected guild that stands above political control. “You can’t fire me — I’m a general.” Good luck with that. //

The current president’s decision to fire flag officers isn’t a break with American law and tradition. The “Appeal to Congress” from former secretaries of defense certainly is. The warning about a crisis is the crisis. This dangerous argument needs to be hammered into its grave, quickly and forcefully.

The regulation, known as the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule, was allegedly based on a provision of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. I say "allegedly" because that portion of the law is anodyne and aspirational, not a call for federal nannyism. //

The 2015 rules required cities and towns, in order to receive funding from HUD to document patterns of racial bias in their neighborhoods, to publicly report the results every three to five years, and to set and track goals to reduce segregation. Under the new rules, any jurisdiction that receives money from HUD must analyze its housing occupancy by race, disability, familial status, economic status, English proficiency, and other categories. It must then analyze factors which contribute to any prohibitive barriers in housing and formulate a plan to remedy the impediments. //

In my view, the rule had three functions. First and foremost, it used awarding Community Development Block Grants to allow advocacy groups to control all zoning decisions. Communities knew if they went against advocacy groups, they would face loss of funds and probably a costly court battle. Second, it was a way of declaring war on established communities and neighborhoods by using their demographics as a way of forcing the construction of no- or low-income housing units. Third, it was another way that the federal bureaucracy could be weaponized to punish political opponents by using lawfare. Oh, it also provided guaranteed employment for a consultant class that could be hired to help communities navigate the rule and its interpretations. //

So, a costly and destructive rule has been sent to the scrap heap. But we can't rest on our laurels. Just as Trump took down the Obama rule, Biden replaced it. We have to create a regulatory web that will take decades to unravel to prevent this kind of nonsense from happening again and shrink government so that even if a future administration wanted to create the rule, they wouldn't be able to enforce it. Yes, it would be easier for Congress to amend the Fair Housing Act, but I stopped believing in leprechauns a long time ago.

Rep. Tim Burchett: Mr. Roman, are you aware that we are sending $40 million a week to the Taliban?

Gregg Roman: Yes, sir.

TB: Can you name other instances of foreign aid going to terrorist organizations?

GR: We have assisted Al-Shabaab in Somalia, there's been instances of the Hamzi network in Sudan, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Kata'ib Hezbollah, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham in Syria. Dozens of terror organizations have received indirect assistance from US foreign aid.

TB: Could you elaborate a little on the mechanisms in place to stop foreign aid from going to terrorist groups and why are they not working if we have any in place? (Goes on to explain a graphic display of terrorist weapons and explosives.)

GR: Let's use Gaza as our case study. $2.1 billion in American taxpayers' money to Gaza since October 7th when Hamas invaded southern Israel. USAID money was going in terms of an emergency use authorization to try to go to parties that USAID formerly had a relationship with in the Gaza Strip. That had to have been vetted by (Office of Foreign Assets Control) OFAC, they should have been vetted against the special designated terror list from the State Department and from other Treasury organizations. Waivers were granted because they said that there was an emergency use to have that money come into Gaza, thereby jettisoning the usual, typical screening procedures. As a result, 90 percent of aid that was going from the United States by way of its agents in Gaza ended up in Hamas-controlled areas.

This is EXCELLENT on the differences between a Democracy and a Republic.

Thinking and behaving like we live in a democracy will be our downfall.

Leslie Johnson
@bithits
·
Oct 21, 2024
The first true democracy was in Athens, Greece. It was a disaster. If 51% wanted you dead, you were executed.
If 51% wanted a war, they got it. And it did happen, often.

Truth Slinger X
@TruthSlingerX
·
Oct 21, 2024
That's why we have a Democratic REPUBLIC and the checks and balances that brings.

This week, Jennica Pounds—known on X as DataRepublican, whose work exposed the abuses of USAID funding—was doxxed by internet bullies, a vicious attack aimed at silencing her efforts to expose government waste and inefficiency.

It seems USAID security was trained for every contingency except that of an American citizen showing up at an American government agency — an agency, mind you, that is supposed to be something like the governmental equivalent of Samaritan’s Purse — and asking mundane questions.

One of the two receptionists invited me to sit down to prevent me from overhearing the phone conversation. As the security guard spoke quietly and nervously on the phone, a host of people came and went through the foyer. Whatever they were doing here, shut down they were not. //

This accusation was quickly dropped in favor of another: espionage.

I freely admitted it to the NSA man: “Yes, I am spying. On my government, not yours” — a cheeky reply but one that clearly caused some consternation.

“Do you have an Egyptian government permit to take photos of Egyptian government buildings?” he asked.

“No.” He briefly looked triumphant. “But I’m not taking photos of Egyptian government buildings. That,” I pointed in the direction of USAID, “is an American government building, and I am an American.”

Annoyed, he left again, pacing on the phone. They clearly did not know how to proceed, and while being charged with espionage is a terrifying prospect, I knew it was problematic for them because it would be a tacit admission that there was more than pallets of rice and canned goods behind the high spiked walls of USAID in Egypt. //0

Safely out of the country, there are several takeaways from this incident. The first is that this is how an intelligence agency behaves, not a benevolence arm of the United States. USAID security guards had been embarrassed by my previous visit where I had breached their security, not by force but with their assistance. This was, for them, a kind of payback. But neither Cairo police nor the NSA had any interest in that. Indeed, they treated USAID security contemptuously.

The second is that I was, I think, dealing with three governments: the authentic U.S. government represented by the naïve fellow who took my call at the U.S. Embassy, the Egyptian government represented by Cairo police and the state security apparatus, and the shadow government represented by whoever it was inside USAID that had the NSA on speed dial. President Trump doesn’t yet have all his own people in place, and the deep state, as real as any branch of government, is deeply embedded. Nowhere is that truer than in the corrupt USAID.

The third is the desperate attempts to get me to enter the USAID compound. One had the feeling they were trying, to quote Fox, to “Jamal Khashoggi” me. Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist, entered a Saudi consulate in Istanbul of his own accord and was there murdered by his own government.

Finally, this was a monumentally stupid response. Had the USAID office, on my first visit, simply said something like, “Yeah, President Trump is slashing the USAID, and we are in the process of closing shop,” there would be no story here. But the fearful, reactionary response smells of corruption. This was the Streisand effect, initiating calls from high in our government to ask: What the hell is going on at USAID in Egypt?

I will leave that question unanswered. But with war in Gaza, Trump’s plan to resettle Palestinians, and mounting evidence that USAID has been funding not only the invasion of the United States by illegal aliens but the very demise of our republic and even terrorism, the destruction of this rogue agency cannot come soon enough.

These people took oaths. They have — or had — security clearances, with the extensive background checks that go with those. I know — I've undergone a background check for a top-secret clearance myself. And, depending on which foreign government these disgruntled ex-employees might choose to go to, this act would be, arguably, treason.

Treason, I should note, is specifically called out in the Constitution. Article III, Section 3, Clause 1: //

If this were to happen, it would be troubling indeed; an indication that the rot in the federal government is far worse, runs far deeper, and is far more pervasive than we thought. The very idea that someone placed in a position of great trust, with insights into matters of national security, with access to highly classified materials, wou

Charlie Kirk

@charliekirk11
·
Follow
For the first time in my lifetime we have an administration that is dead serious about rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in government so the next generation doesn’t live as debt slaves.

Every expense must be justified—with our tax dollars you are guilty until proven innocent.

5:11 PM · Feb 24, 2025. //

The thing to realize about the government is that it's not a citizen of the United States, and thus isn't subject to the same rights as we are. In fact, the government doesn't technically have any rights, it has allowances as agreed upon by the people of the United States of America. It has certain powers, to be sure, but these powers can be increased, decreased, or eliminated as the people see fit.

As you can see, this is exactly what's happening with DOGE. The people demanded a reduction in government power and a removal of waste, and that's exactly what's happening. Even as the Democrats and leftists cry foul, the government is losing its power.

There is a simple truth buried here.

If a government is unable or unwilling to reveal how it's using the money it takes from us with the threat of punishment for not giving up, then it's not our government. //

. In fact, government is often times a necessary evil, born out of a need to inhibit the worst impulses of man, whether those impulses be foreign or domestic. It is a system necessary for civilization to happen in an imperfect world, but it's the fact that we have an imperfect world that the system we create to curb is itself imperfect, and thus needs to be monitored, audited, and sometimes destroyed, at least in part so as not to have to be destroyed in its totality.

While the mainstream press screams bloody murder over the Trump administration's trimming back of the bureaucratic state, shocking new details have emerged about how government resources were being misused. A new report from City Journal has obtained chat logs showing NSA representatives, including from the CIA and FBI, used the NSA's government interlink program to discuss various transgender fetishes and aspects of "transitioning."

The report shows topics such as "genital castration, artificial vaginas, piss fetishes, sex polycules, and gangbangs" were posted using the government system. This is what your tax dollars were going to. //

[ Rated R or M descriptions ]

Government officials have lived in an alternate universe where all their most disgusting, corrupt desires are not only met but encouraged. All while getting paid hefty salaries and benefits packages. And to do what? No one really knows, but they clearly had quite a bit of free time on their hands.

These agencies have to be gutted to the studs, and that's why the work of DOGE and the Trump-appointed heads is so important. Leaving the masses in place and changing a few regulations won't fix this, and the more insane revelations we get, the more of a mandate the administration has. The U.S. government has been inundated by lazy, wasteful, degenerates for decades, and it's about time the hammer dropped. Taxpayer money should not be used to fund a funhouse for mentally ill people.

James Jinnette @james_jinnette1
·
Are you ready to have your mind blown?

USAID has given a total of… wait for it…

$164,749,304.99 to terrorist linked organizations.

ONE HUNDRED SIXTY-FIVE MILLION

Thank goodness @DOGE came along and discovered all of this insanity.
Last edited
5:33 PM · Feb 21, 2025

Elon Musk @elonmusk
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The reason this matters is that a significant number of people who are supposed to be working for the government are doing so little work that they are not checking their email at all!

In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used… Show more

Libs of TikTok @libsoftiktok
Literally takes 2 minutes to respond.

Reporting to your boss about what you accomplished at work is very standard.

Why is this so controversial?
1:43 PM · Feb 23, 2025. //

Elon Musk @elonmusk
·
This email is a very basic pulse check. //

Employees are accountable to their employers. In the case of government workers, we are their employers. President Trump is the man we chose to oversee our employees. He has assigned Elon Musk and the DOGE to examine the federal payroll and eliminate the dead weight. That's a worthy task, and the president seems determined to get it done. This is something that should have been done decades ago.

The speed and efficiency with which the new POTUS and his team are setting fire to The Swamp has even the most seasoned Washington D.C. veterans looking around in a daze. I know that the majority of those who have watched and written about politics are also stunned, including those of us here at RedState. //

I can't recall at any time over the past 30 years anyone talking about cutting and restructuring the FBI or the CIA, even as campaign rhetoric. That Trump and his team are actually moving forward with this is an absolute first in the history of how the federal government is used and how it interacts with the citizens that they serve. //

Some of the pie-in-the-sky predictions of cutting the overall deficit within a year to a year and a half could become reality. Trying to tackle long-term entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare could start to be moved upon and not with fantasy 10-year projections.

My gut feeling is that, for reasons I laid out in Trump Declares War on the Administrative State, Dellinger's case is much closer to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau case that resulted in the protection given that agency's director being tossed than it is to the safe harbor of Humphrey's Executor. Dellinger is not in charge of a "quasi-legislative" or "quasi-judiicial" organization; he wields quintessentially executive power, and to insulate him from the chief executive of the land is unconstitutional. In his dissent, Gorsuch basically said there was no legal way to reinstate Dellinger. But as Jonathan Turley said, a majority of the Supreme Court would rather this case go away than rule on the facts it offers.

If a New York Times report is to be believed, Donald Trump doesn’t want to do the hard work of actually being president. //

While the idea of a president with no power sounds crazy to American ears, it’s actually how a lot of advanced democracies work around the world. Many countries have a ceremonial figurehead — either an elected president or a hereditary monarch — who represents the nation at state dinners and ribbon-cutting ceremonies. And they also have a head of government, usually the prime minister, who makes all the important policy decisions.

In the United States, we’ve combined these roles into a single person, and it hasn’t been working very well. It’s made the presidency an impossibly demanding job, while giving our head of government a degree of prestige that makes it harder to hold him accountable for his policy mistakes.

So here’s a modest proposal: Let’s make Donald Trump king of the United States. This seems to be the job he actually wants. And replacing America’s powerful elected president with a powerless hereditary monarchy would improve the American political system. //

Should America have a weak president like Italy or a constitutional monarch like Great Britain? As Vox’s Dylan Matthews has argued, the key advantage of a constitutional monarch is that he or she has absolutely no democratic legitimacy. An elected president is always going to be tempted to meddle in politics, no matter how much the Constitution formally limits his role.

But there’s zero danger of a hereditary monarch like Queen Elizabeth doing this. She knows that the public is only going to support her continued reign if she remains strictly neutral in political fights. In short, it’s precisely a monarch’s lack of democratic legitimacy that makes monarchy a better model than a weak presidency.

If Trump merely became a figurehead president for four or eight years, there’s a danger that his successor would try to once again exercise real authority. Which is why the smarter play would be to make Trump’s vision of a powerless presidency permanent: Abolish the presidency and turn President Trump into King Donald.

King Donald would rule for life, but he’d have few of the powers of the current presidency. He wouldn’t have the power to veto legislation or appoint judges, ambassadors, or members of the Cabinet. He wouldn’t command the military or negotiate treaties. Congress might retain the power to impeach him, but with the king having a largely symbolic role there’d be no reason to use it.

In a lot of ways, Trump has been preparing to be America’s monarch all his life. His gold-encrusted Manhattan penthouse seems tacky now. But it — as well as with his winter palace in Palm Beach, Florida — are appropriate residences for America’s reigning monarch.

The role of a monarch is to preside over important occasions and accept the adoration of the public without doing any real work. No one’s personality is better suited to this role than Donald Trump’s.

Democrat mega-donor George Soros, the lead financer of the institutional left in America, used U.S. Agency of International Development (USAID) disbursements to fund color revolutions in the Balkans, according to U.S. spending hawks.

USAID gave several Soros groups millions of American tax dollars that allegedly went toward stoking social unrest in the Balkan Peninsula, including collaborative efforts to destabilize Macedonia's democratically elected center-right government and ultimately overthrow it.

Macedonia is a broadly conservative country with a flat rate tax of 10 percent, one of the lowest in all of Europe, and a governing right-wing party (VMRO-DPMNE), whose camp won the 2024 parliamentary elections in a landslide against the incumbent pro-European Unionism coalition. //

"If they need a so-called colorful revolution, then they do it through NGOs with money," lamented Gruevski, then-leader of the country's conservative VMRO-DPMNE party until his resignation, which was brought about by the 2016 color revolution.

"Soros has turned the NGOs in Macedonia into a modern army," Gruevski told Republika.

In this culture war waged against the perceived enemy, the ex-PM explained, the "Soros-owned media" would malign their political opponents and brew "a myriad of alleged scandals to your name" as a way to sway public opinion. //

According to grant records, in 2016, USAID awarded a $9.5 million contract to the East-West Management Institute (EWMI), a Soros-funded nonprofit that focuses on "restructuring" former Soviet states in central and eastern Europe. //

In 2019, at the behest of Congress, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on its audit of USAID's activities in Macedonia, including funding of Open Society Foundations operations. GAO found that nearly $5 million was, in fact, awarded to the Foundation Open Society–Macedonia "for democracy assistance," and that the East-West Management Institute received $3.7 million in funding for igniting "political competition" and bolstering "independent media."

The meddling isn't limited to Macedonia; Soros has a documented history of alarming subversive activity in this volatile region.