Seems she hasn't learned the lesson of recent years that you Never Apologize For Anything.
Someone described modern existence with the media/social-media/Online power as like having a conversation with the Fae. Never apologize, because that means you agree that you did something wrong, and the people you're dealing with have a bottomless hunger for appeasement when wronged.
I mean, they're not wrong to say that this is going to very quickly stop being about "congestion reduction" and start being a source of revenue that the government depends on staying at a consistent level, and whoops that level's gone down...
(Pigouvian taxes work great until you realize that you've eaten all the pigs but you're still hungry for bacon.)
That said, I think this is the kind of thing the country needs. Fuck You, Make Me in response to Trump or his butt-boy making some crazy decision. Not a Strongly-Worded Letter Of Resignation in response to some perfidy but "hell no, I ain't doing that, and if you want to fire me you bastards are gonna need the riot squad with power tools to get me out of this office!"
I'm...yeah bro maybe you want to examine your emotions on this one a bit.
This is hardly anything libertarians would want. This is keeping the structure and stricture of government in place but taking away the labor that actually made the machine go.
I think it's legit to look at the apparent waste and mismanagement of government activities and say "this is happening because they're mostly dumb people doing dumb things, and they got hired to fill out an org-chart and as a jobs program for the Professional Middle Class".
*shrug* I've been pointing out all along that "okay I'll hire my OWN cops" is a valid response to "if you didn't pay taxes there wouldn't be any cops".
And "there's more poor people than rich people, so the rich people better watch out" yeah but there's more bullets than poor people, and bullets are cheaper than welfare.
"And if that’s the case, we then have to deal with the truly unpleasant tasks of means-testing, lifting caps, making cuts, and maybe considering offering euthanasia to unproductive eaters."
I remember our big Health Care Reform discussion where I was assured that it's okay to decide that it would cost more to keep people alive than they're worth, so long as it's the government doing the deciding.
I'm not sure how "conflicts of interest" could even exist for federally-funded research, but this is probably going to end up being "you now have to fill out and submit a form saying that no such conflict exists", and if someone later thinks there's a problem now they can hang that form around your neck and call you both a cheat and a liar.
"thus is extremely obvious that the decision to remove those videos was an entirely correct interpretation of the EO"
You're going awful hard at this for someone who insists that this is not malicious compliance but that the direct and knowing intent of the Trump Administration was to delete all mention of the Tuskegee Airmen from the history of the United States Air Force (which makes it doubly odd that as soon as the administration learned this had happened they ordered the information restored.)
72 billion? That's $200 per United States citizen. Not <i<nothing, but not some grievous imposition on finance whose removal we ought to celebrate as a chain off the neck of the working class.
"That DEI program included a video about the Tuskegee Airmen. Agree or disagree?
That is because that is the sort of video that you find in DEI programs. Agree or disagree?"
(emphasis in original)
hm.
old and busted: "DEI isn't nearly as widespread as you CUNservatives imagine, it's not just being 'jammed into everything' the way you say, actually it's about education regarding equity and history and structural bigotry!"
new hotness: "if it mentions black people, it's DEI."
Like, this is less "we're absolutely certain that it'll be somewhere along the red line" and more "along the red line the probability is .02 percentage points higher than the rest of the planet".
I think it'll be useful because it'll show people how much spending appears to be for Bullshit Jobs but in fact is related to specific things that the government was specifically directed to do.
"those guys are dirty jerks and you're just gonna have to put up with them using black people as pawns in a power struggle" is an interesting attempt to flex on me, but okay, I guess if you want to ascribe that position to them I'm not going to stop you.
" I think the greater danger is we have half of the legislature ready to do the same."
We had half the legislature go along with Presidential leadership back in 2009, but you've already said that you think we were lying when we complained about it back then (unlike you, who punished that Barack Obama by not voting for him twice...)
I think they finally figured out that no matter how hard they try, they are not going to get an election do-over that results in Hillary Clinton winning.
"If you have genuine principles in 2009, they ought to remain the same in 2025, no?"
Did I say somewhere that I supported the actions of the Trump administration, or are you just assuming that's the case because you're mad that someone's disagreeing with you?
If you need to actually have it said out loud to you: yes, I think what the Trump administration is doing here is a damaging and wasteful way to go about things, a way that's going to lead to a lot of trouble (some warranted, some opportunistic) and achieve only a small part of its intent, and involves a derangement of the established Constitutional interpretation of how government works.
Thing is, I don't have to go on to explain why it's a different position than I held before because it is not a different position than I held before.
"Freelancing the rules of government because it feels good is a path we should don’t want to tread."
hey remember back in 2009 when those dirty mean republicans were just filibustering everything but we fortunately had principled leaders like Nancy Pelosi who could use Deem And Pass to get important legislation out the door, and Barack Obama who could direct the regulatory bureaucracy via Executive Orders?
Like when the OMB memo came out and said "do not freeze or pause aid given to individual persons" and organizations replied "welllll, teeeechnically, that aid comes to our organization and then it goes to persons, so, I guess we'll just have to freeze and pause all that money, just like you said we should do, definitely what you said, just tryna comply here sor, goin agin'st orders mornmajobsworf sor"
Hey cool, we'll get eighteen months of everyone pretending that human spaceflight is gonna move to Starship, we'll spend a pile of money on engineering studies, and then it'll go back to SLS which was designed for in the first place.
"[T]he government asserted that the Air Force should not have Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Training anymore."
I'm old enough to remember people like, um, you, telling me that "look what you made me do, look at this awful thing that you made me do" wasn't a defense against intentionally doing something mean and stupid.
I mean, you're right that the directive did not specifically address how the Air Force was to honor the legacy of elite units like the 332nd Fighter Group, but it's also likely that the people writing the directive assumed that the Air Force would interpret it reasonably and say "we should create a separate method to remember these men" and not "WELP, GUESS WE GOTTA DELETE ANY MENTION OF BLACK PEOPLE WHATSOEVER, JUST FOLLOWIN' ORDERS HERE, HAIL TRUMP".
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/17/2025”
Seems she hasn't learned the lesson of recent years that you Never Apologize For Anything.
Someone described modern existence with the media/social-media/Online power as like having a conversation with the Fae. Never apologize, because that means you agree that you did something wrong, and the people you're dealing with have a bottomless hunger for appeasement when wronged.
On “From Vox: How Democrats should respond to Trump’s war on DEI”
It's like the thing about the Barbie movie having the Nine Dash Line...but doing it wrong.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/17/2025”
I mean, they're not wrong to say that this is going to very quickly stop being about "congestion reduction" and start being a source of revenue that the government depends on staying at a consistent level, and whoops that level's gone down...
(Pigouvian taxes work great until you realize that you've eaten all the pigs but you're still hungry for bacon.)
That said, I think this is the kind of thing the country needs. Fuck You, Make Me in response to Trump or his butt-boy making some crazy decision. Not a Strongly-Worded Letter Of Resignation in response to some perfidy but "hell no, I ain't doing that, and if you want to fire me you bastards are gonna need the riot squad with power tools to get me out of this office!"
On “Bull-DOGEing Government”
I'm...yeah bro maybe you want to examine your emotions on this one a bit.
This is hardly anything libertarians would want. This is keeping the structure and stricture of government in place but taking away the labor that actually made the machine go.
"
I think it's legit to look at the apparent waste and mismanagement of government activities and say "this is happening because they're mostly dumb people doing dumb things, and they got hired to fill out an org-chart and as a jobs program for the Professional Middle Class".
The thing is, the solution is not just a private-industry style "clear out the dross and let your top performers do what they were hired to do", because in a lot of cases there's valid reasons for those dumb wastes of time and money, those are in fact rational responses to the requirements that have been levied against the organization. Here's an example of something apparently dumb and stupid and wasteful that was in fact an entirely appropriate response to information-security regulations.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/17/2025”
saul you're literally doing the thing where you make up a guy in your head and get mad at him
"
*shrug* I've been pointing out all along that "okay I'll hire my OWN cops" is a valid response to "if you didn't pay taxes there wouldn't be any cops".
And "there's more poor people than rich people, so the rich people better watch out" yeah but there's more bullets than poor people, and bullets are cheaper than welfare.
On “Bull-DOGEing Government”
"And if that’s the case, we then have to deal with the truly unpleasant tasks of means-testing, lifting caps, making cuts, and maybe considering offering euthanasia to unproductive eaters."
I remember our big Health Care Reform discussion where I was assured that it's okay to decide that it would cost more to keep people alive than they're worth, so long as it's the government doing the deciding.
On “Thursday Throughput: Doomsday Rock Edition”
I'm not sure how "conflicts of interest" could even exist for federally-funded research, but this is probably going to end up being "you now have to fill out and submit a form saying that no such conflict exists", and if someone later thinks there's a problem now they can hang that form around your neck and call you both a cheat and a liar.
On “The USAID Fight Is About Power, Not Spending”
"thus is extremely obvious that the decision to remove those videos was an entirely correct interpretation of the EO"
You're going awful hard at this for someone who insists that this is not malicious compliance but that the direct and knowing intent of the Trump Administration was to delete all mention of the Tuskegee Airmen from the history of the United States Air Force (which makes it doubly odd that as soon as the administration learned this had happened they ordered the information restored.)
"
72 billion? That's $200 per United States citizen. Not <i<nothing, but not some grievous imposition on finance whose removal we ought to celebrate as a chain off the neck of the working class.
"
(what they were saying DEI programs were is what you, now, are saying DEI programs were and are)
"
"That DEI program included a video about the Tuskegee Airmen. Agree or disagree?
That is because that is the sort of video that you find in DEI programs. Agree or disagree?"
(emphasis in original)
hm.
old and busted: "DEI isn't nearly as widespread as you CUNservatives imagine, it's not just being 'jammed into everything' the way you say, actually it's about education regarding equity and history and structural bigotry!"
new hotness: "if it mentions black people, it's DEI."
On “Thursday Throughput: Doomsday Rock Edition”
Like, this is less "we're absolutely certain that it'll be somewhere along the red line" and more "along the red line the probability is .02 percentage points higher than the rest of the planet".
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/10/2025”
Why should they keep protesting? They got what they wanted; the Democrats were punished for their failure to stop Israel turning Gaza into rubble.
On “Deficits, Debt, and DOGE”
I think it'll be useful because it'll show people how much spending appears to be for Bullshit Jobs but in fact is related to specific things that the government was specifically directed to do.
On “The USAID Fight Is About Power, Not Spending”
"those guys are dirty jerks and you're just gonna have to put up with them using black people as pawns in a power struggle" is an interesting attempt to flex on me, but okay, I guess if you want to ascribe that position to them I'm not going to stop you.
"
" I think the greater danger is we have half of the legislature ready to do the same."
We had half the legislature go along with Presidential leadership back in 2009, but you've already said that you think we were lying when we complained about it back then (unlike you, who punished that Barack Obama by not voting for him twice...)
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/10/2025”
I think they finally figured out that no matter how hard they try, they are not going to get an election do-over that results in Hillary Clinton winning.
On “The USAID Fight Is About Power, Not Spending”
"If you have genuine principles in 2009, they ought to remain the same in 2025, no?"
Did I say somewhere that I supported the actions of the Trump administration, or are you just assuming that's the case because you're mad that someone's disagreeing with you?
If you need to actually have it said out loud to you: yes, I think what the Trump administration is doing here is a damaging and wasteful way to go about things, a way that's going to lead to a lot of trouble (some warranted, some opportunistic) and achieve only a small part of its intent, and involves a derangement of the established Constitutional interpretation of how government works.
Thing is, I don't have to go on to explain why it's a different position than I held before because it is not a different position than I held before.
"
"Freelancing the rules of government because it feels good is a path we should don’t want to tread."
hey remember back in 2009 when those dirty mean republicans were just filibustering everything but we fortunately had principled leaders like Nancy Pelosi who could use Deem And Pass to get important legislation out the door, and Barack Obama who could direct the regulatory bureaucracy via Executive Orders?
"
Like when the OMB memo came out and said "do not freeze or pause aid given to individual persons" and organizations replied "welllll, teeeechnically, that aid comes to our organization and then it goes to persons, so, I guess we'll just have to freeze and pause all that money, just like you said we should do, definitely what you said, just tryna comply here sor, goin agin'st orders mornmajobsworf sor"
On “Off With Their (Over)heads: Trump Administration at War with Public Health”
Hey cool, we'll get eighteen months of everyone pretending that human spaceflight is gonna move to Starship, we'll spend a pile of money on engineering studies, and then it'll go back to SLS which was designed for in the first place.
On “The USAID Fight Is About Power, Not Spending”
"we're gonna fuck up on purpose and blame it on you"
stunning and brave, a strong statement of confidence in the moral validity of your position
"
"[T]he government asserted that the Air Force should not have Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Training anymore."
I'm old enough to remember people like, um, you, telling me that "look what you made me do, look at this awful thing that you made me do" wasn't a defense against intentionally doing something mean and stupid.
I mean, you're right that the directive did not specifically address how the Air Force was to honor the legacy of elite units like the 332nd Fighter Group, but it's also likely that the people writing the directive assumed that the Air Force would interpret it reasonably and say "we should create a separate method to remember these men" and not "WELP, GUESS WE GOTTA DELETE ANY MENTION OF BLACK PEOPLE WHATSOEVER, JUST FOLLOWIN' ORDERS HERE, HAIL TRUMP".
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.