Republican Rep. Thomas Massie roasted Attorney General Pam Bondi after she showed up on Capitol Hill with prepared insults to lob at critics while refusing to answer questions about Jeffrey Epstein. ...
"It is totally inappropriate and against the separations of powers for the DOJ to surveil us as we search the Epstein files,” Jayapal wrote on X. “Bondi showed up today with a burn book that held a printed search history of exactly what emails I searched. That is outrageous and I intend to pursue this and stop this spying on members.”
What is so wild is that Lindsey got his panties in a total wad over the phone records of key Republicans being pulled for who called who, when, and for how long - not the content of the conversations or the texts - in relation the TERRORISM OF J6. A real crime that threatened our country's very foundations.
Meanwhile, this bitch is having people conducting oversight on the crimes that SHE IS COVERING UP being monitored?
I wonder if Lindsey and the like are going to have their panties bunched up over this?
The Republicans/conservatives have always had a dark undercurrent and plenty of crazy in their midst and heaps of racism. They started to really rip that mask off when Obama was elected.
Then Pedonald started up with being King of the Birthers and we were really on our way...
Faux (started in 1996) and hate radio spent a good deal of the 90s trying to take down Clinton. He totally consumed the right wing. Hillary was not wrong when she talked about a vast right wing conspiracy.
Oh, and it surely didn't help them get any less crazy when people were referring to Clinton as the first black President.
I think years of this hateful nonsense and conspiracy theories really came to a head when they watched W flame out to the point that they constructed a fake movement, originally called teabaggers, to pretend they weren't Republicans. The economy cratered at the end of W's reign, the Iraq War was shown to be the quagmire all the liberals told them it was going to be, and now a black man who they were told was a Kenyan usurper was here to clean up the mess.
The fact that most normal Americans really rather liked him drove them all the crazier.
I seem to recall they were in the red for the first N years (5?) of their operation, so you very well may be right that they started getting more traction later on.
IIRC, Cheney mandated them in certain venues, which probably didn't hurt.
The Epstein Class is doing more stuff to make things affordable for Americans, I see.
JFC. The economy is in a real state, everyone is fearful of what AI will do to the job market and this asshole is focused on building arches, ballrooms, naming shit after himself and fighting "woke".
Whenever there is a discussion about helping people, we have to talk about means testing and talk about austerity and the budget and the deficit and handouts and get lectures from the Epstein Class about the honor of working for a living and so on.
When it comes to punching down on someone, whether it's bombing brown people in foreign lands or building out the concentration camps for brown people here (well, they are just planned to be the first), it's SHUT UP AND TAKE MY (the American taxpayers') MONEY!
This could have easily been predicted, because everything Pedonald touches turns to shit. Why this country ever let this shitty rapey con artist get his grubby tiny paws on it is beyond me, but here we are.
Donald Trump has repeatedly pledged to slash the national deficit and curb debt during his second term, but a sobering assessment of the nation’s financial health by one of the federal government’s premier fiscal watchdogs suggests Trump 2.0’s policies have not only collectively pushed the federal deficit significantly ...
It's weird, because I'm watching and reading about how many investors seem to be "quietly" shifting into more international funds.
If you even look at ETFs like VTI (closely matches S&P 500) vs. VXUS (International):
VTI went up 11.3% in the past year. Hey, that's beating inflation and not terrible.
But: meanwhile, VXUS went up 30.8%.
In the past, it was usually the other way around. ETFs that track things like the S&P tend to outperform ones that track the rest of the rest of the market.
I was looking at the same. Some naysayer I know was saying it would never pay back before the panels "failed".
Of course, he was assuming that the panels would fail with 100% certainty at a certain period of time. He was also assuming that electricity costs are going to stay stagnant. If I have a battery backup installed, that obviously rejiggers things, and I'm assuming they not last very long, either at least when it comes to the timelines one talks about in regards to things like houses.
I am definitely not going to assume that, LOL. That hasn't even been true in the past year alone, nevermind what some of the more negative predictions have for how costs will be impacted by things like data centers.
I live in Colorado and so probably different heating/cooling circumstances, but people also don't seem to be thinking about future costs of energy either.
Now, it could be that things turn around, Donvict is out of the picture, and we have a huge boom in solar and wind and through legislation or just from the market being saturated, prices drop. But given the way that things are going right now thanks to the utterly insane Republicans, all I see is those guys fighting against the future in every way possible while they stand aside and let Donvict and his criminal family just grift their way to billions of dollars of ill-gotten gains.
Every once in a while, I dip into various Boglehead forums and see what kind of discussion is going on around their current thinking on the three fund portfolio and the way to divvy it up.
Of course, looking back only a year and trying to time/second-guess things generally goes against the principles of Boglehead investing, but you still see people wondering about it even among Bogleheads.
It is entirely possible that what the donnie crime family is doing to this country is very different than trends of the past.
It cracks me up that so many idiots think it's the Republicans that are countercultural rebels or some such bullshit, when, really, they always come around to basically this archetype:
I don't expect many people to wake TF up to that fact.
In fact, even among the people you'd think would be more aware as a general rule, I will often see (mind you, this is usually coming from what is probably just an overly vocal minority and/or paid trolls there to try to disrupt and delay, but I'm sure this serves to push away would-be allies and make people generally feel helpless at the state of things in the opposition):
People playing oppression olympics. Lectures aimed at a portion of the left that aren't considered maximalist enough, or are thought not to tick enough "intersectional" checkboxes. Demands for age limits on politicians (WTF?). Demands for term limits (same thing: WTF?). Some portion of the left saying people (like Bernie Bros) are being misogynist or racist because they want to focus on issues of class. Single issue voters that will bow out if a Democrat says even one thing about that issue that pisses them off. People not realizing that, in the real world, you basically have two choices. The better choice may only support about 60% of what you want, maybe even less in some cases. You ain't getting a pretty pony when you go to vote. You are voting to try to maximize the good and minimize the damage, not create a utopia. That's life. I remember when I was 14, too. But I got better.
This last one is probably the most difficult and I struggle with this myself (believe that) - and it's this: not giving people a path for redemption. Sure, someone might have been a three time voter for Donvict and maybe even a bit racist and anti-woke and have stupid ideas about trans or whatever. But sometimes, just maybe, some people grow up. Or have an epiphany and change. Should we make them wear a scarlet letter for life? Or when someone shows that they genuinely want to do better, do we welcome that? When they get that first glimmer that, oh, this is all about class and setting us up to quarrel with each other over the dumbest of stuff (race, gender, age, religion, nationality, language), how can we help them on that path?
“There was no integrity in that room today, it seems like, when it came to Epstein and Maxwell,” Teresa Helm said after Wednesday's House Judiciary Committee hearing. ...
That rep for the Epstein Class had every intention of going there with her little burn book to show that she's still Donvict's gal and to give a middle finger to any decent person in the country. If the victims are harmed in the process, then that's perfect, because with the conservatives cruelty is the point.
Or checks the state of Dow Jones and uses that as a jumping-off point to praise a useless dumbass like Donvict and say he's the bestest president that ever did presidenting and did you guys even apologize to him yet?
The best part of the hearing was when the Democratic woman who pointed out that of course we are asking questions about what YOU and the DOJ did in relation to Epstein, since that's what the hearing is about. Blondi tried to pretend she was really baffled that people were not talking about all the shit she wanted to distract with, LOL.
Why aren't you guys even talking about THAT?! At this hearing that's totally about this other thing!???
Also Blondi: did you guys even apologize to President TRUMP (she has a weird way of saying his name; she sounds like a cult member talking about their cult leader FFS) for investigating his crimes?
They have shown themselves to be utter frauds on the very single issue they pretended to care so much about.
Blondi and Patel especially show how completely unserious the Republicans were about child sex-trafficking. They only showed lots of concern when lots of idiots fell for that Pizzagate/Qanon horseshit because they thought it would be the Democrats that are the perps.
I keep asking - have the Republicans even met their own party? It's full of Republicans. And they think the Democratic Party is going to have all the pervs?
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Of all the people you'd think would be impressed by her Adult-Mean-Girl-with-a-burn-book routine, and using just about every logical fallacy there is, you think it would be "maga", AKA the baby-word we use for the base of the Republican Party.
I'm just surprised she didn't demand to see the manager somewhere in the course of her unhinged rants about how a hearing about her bungling/coverup for the Epstein Class wasn't praising Donvict and wasn't talking about the Dow, and didn't want to talk about whatever weird bullshit side quest conservative grievances du jour she was trying to inject in there by name-dropping random names into the mix.
I cannot even imagine what her internal dialogue must be like if she actually blurted out this kind of bilge, out loud, in the middle of a national hearing that is going to be televised. JFC.
That’s actually pretty terrifying. That means a significant portion of the women population will probably not vote.
And a significant part of America would be delighted with that outcome. Some of them are quiet about it and don't say it in mixed company; others are people calling for the repeal of the 19th and having fElon retweet them.
I know these people are deeply moronic, but damn, it seems like all the cooling needs for something that is supposed to also serve as a bunker would be very, very stupid. DC is a freaking swamp in the summer. I would understand build-outs in places like Iceland where they can power them with geothermal and cooling might be a lot less problematic...
Also, I honestly have no idea how long the supposed need for all this AI processing will even be around as a general rule. I thought they were already admitting they were running up against limits on finding data they could train on and the kinds of returns they were getting. Not to mention that breakthroughs in chip design/algorithms etc., might make all this hardware very moot and I guess I don't know if it could be repurposed for things (such as SETI or protein folding or crypto) or if it really is single purpose only...
I can see it doing well for heat in the winter. That's how Cheyenne Mountain worked. DC can be so miserably muggy in the summer, so I sure hope they have a way of keeping that bunker livable for humans if it's dual-use.
On the GPU thing, I was under the impression AI hardware were ASICs, but I didn't look into it. I guess if they are GPU and were sold off to add to the power of Folding@Home (at one point, it was the largest supercomputer but not sure of the state of things now) and maybe really supercharge a lot of research...
When Balint’s time expired, and the out lawmaker yielded back, Bondi asked for a moment to respond, and used it to go on the offensive: “You didn’t ask Merrick Garland anything about Epstein,” she said. Balint shot back: “Weak sauce.” ...
When she was spouting off with the "who is ____ ____?" or "you don't want to talk about ____ ____" - which I assume is some bullshit talking points about certain people the fragile right wing is currently obsessed with, and I didn't even want to search Duck duck for in case that would help boost exactly what she wants to have boosted by name dropping them, I wish the Democrats shot back, sarcastically, "who is John Galt?"
Pam Bondi’s Prepared Insult Flash Cards Exposed by GOP Rep ( www.thedailybeast.com )
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie roasted Attorney General Pam Bondi after she showed up on Capitol Hill with prepared insults to lob at critics while refusing to answer questions about Jeffrey Epstein. ...
U.S. Political Polarization Didn’t Rise Gradually—It Spiked After 2008, Study Finds ( thedebrief.org )
Polarization in the U.S. didn’t rise gradually. A new machine-learning study shows it surged after 2008- but why?
AOC accuses Trump of trying to usher in ‘age of authoritarianism’ at Munich conference ( www.theguardian.com )
Congressperson says US president and Marco Rubio are tearing apart transatlantic alliance ...
Trump Rx prescription drug site ‘not a solution’ for many patients, experts say ( www.theguardian.com )
Also a good podcast on this too ...
Trump administration sues Harvard over data on race in admissions ( www.bbc.com )
'Later found dead': Dem lawmaker flags explosive Trump allegation in Epstein files ( www.rawstory.com )
ICE plans to spend $38.3 billion turning warehouses into detention centers ( www.washingtonpost.com )
cross-posted from: ...
Trump promised RFK Jr. would ‘restore faith in American health care.’ A year in, trust has plummeted | CNN ( www.cnn.com )
‘The fiscal trajectory is not sustainable’: CBO warns about the highest debt in U.S. history as Trump adds $1.4 trillion to 10-year deficit ( fortune.com )
Donald Trump has repeatedly pledged to slash the national deficit and curb debt during his second term, but a sobering assessment of the nation’s financial health by one of the federal government’s premier fiscal watchdogs suggests Trump 2.0’s policies have not only collectively pushed the federal deficit significantly ...
House Republicans call to investigate Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime show over 'widespread twerking, grinding, pelvic thrusts' ( ew.com )
Good god! Twerking, grinding, pelvic thrusts??? Stuck to raping women and children like us, ya filthy animals!!!
ICE Boosts Income at Private Prison Company GEO Group by 800 Percent ( prospect.org )
cross-posted from: ...
Gallup will no longer track presidential approval ratings after nearly 90 years ( www.usatoday.com )
Class war is the future of American politics ( messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com )
Conservative lawmakers plan to investigate Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show ( www.pastemagazine.com )
Key Points: ...
Unmasking Accountability: California’s No Secret Police Act And Immigration Enforcement ( ace-usa.org )
Epstein survivors say they felt 'degraded' and a 'lack of empathy' from AG Pam Bondi ( www.nbcnews.com )
“There was no integrity in that room today, it seems like, when it came to Epstein and Maxwell,” Teresa Helm said after Wednesday's House Judiciary Committee hearing. ...
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Elon Musk posted about race almost every day in January ( www.theguardian.com )
Many social media posts by Tesla CEO on his platform are indiscernible from those of white supremacists, say experts ...
House GOP passes sweeping anti-voting bill that could disenfranchise millions, sends measure to Senate ( www.democracydocket.com )
The GOP’s sweeping new anti-voting bill cleared the U.S. House Wednesday, setting up a high-stakes battle in the Senate. ...
Trump’s push for donors fund his $400M ballroom might cost him the whole project ( www.independent.co.uk )
Oatly loses long-running 'milk' battle with dairy lobby ( www.bbc.com )
cross-posted from: ...
Pam Bondi suggests Jewish lesbian lawmaker is anti-Semitic in explosive hearing ( www.advocate.com )
When Balint’s time expired, and the out lawmaker yielded back, Bondi asked for a moment to respond, and used it to go on the offensive: “You didn’t ask Merrick Garland anything about Epstein,” she said. Balint shot back: “Weak sauce.” ...