US Government takes $1B from nuclear modernization for gold-plated jet
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
"4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44699052
Not sure how either story is making anything great again...
are they just this pathetic? or do they largely see this as personally beneficial?
Because the system delivered the outcome it must be the only possibility.
Kind of like a 'please take one' sign on a bucket of Halloween candy breaks down really, really fast in the presence of bad actors.
Currently, the courts are the only 'checks and balances' on the executive branch and they operate slowly by design. Eventually this will all get sorted out and we'll get back to normalcy assuming, of course, 'free and fair elections' survive the turmoil.
They don't "see this", they control it.
> I am endlessly fascinated by how almost the entire American elite has just accepted... policy being driven by idiotic childish whims
There's nothing idiotic, childish or whimsy - bread for some, circuses for the rest - it's a scheme old as the world. The reality show isn't real.
Sure, the elites of America have a lot of power, but they don't have enough power to override the combined force of the POTUS and half of the country. What do you expect them to do?
This has all the same vibe as "How could Democrats let it happen?" (Yes, Democrats does have a lot of faults. But I'm tired of everything somehow being Democrats' fault.)
It is hard to come up with first cause. But a helpful starting point for this mess was when Ross Perot ran as a populist. At that time both parties were at the start of an accelerating run of service to self and corporations over middle America. Then came newt gringrich and a whole bunch of other increasingly hyperbolic nonsense which contributed to fund raising off culture wars.
America won't get fixed until congress gets fixed. A good president can pause decline but it cannot fix root causes
By the way I agree with you wholeheartedly that the problem is that congress is not currently serving as the check and balance it was intended to be. What can we do about that? Is it time to end the filibuster?
As to what to do about it: I feel like we need now in politics what some of the enlightenment movement emphasized then: real, rational, substance. We have got to get to place where pretty boys talking BS rhetoric on TV is toxic. Having a talking point for complex subjects isn't good enough anymore.
We want results: a 10 year fiscal plan so debt doesn't swamp the federal budget; operational control of the border with immigration allowed; equal justice under the law including corporations and connected people. I want more Americans asking congress: where's the beef?
Right now Congress are not statesmen; they'll have to have to be told by the electorate to do better at running the country. They simply won't do it without that pressure. Most people are +/- 20% of center. We have more in common and we're in larger numbers: forget political parties; we want the fundamentals handled.
We had the whole pantomime about project 2025 for example. A cabinet full of billionaires. Musk funding. Trump delivering on abortion even though he could clearly not care less about it. Fascist judges chosen by the Federalist society.
None of his shit would work if there weren't powerful forces making sure that it did, falling over themselves to excuse or distract from Trump's many blunders. Or viciously attacking his rivals over made up shit.
I like to start from the Powell memo personally but there is a vast right wing conspiracy. It's not one amoral psychopath you're dealing with but a whole well-funded ecosystem of them.
Good article on this topic from 2021:
>Five points for anger, one for a ‘like’: How Facebook’s formula fostered rage and misinformation
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/26/faceboo...
>The first downgrade to the angry emoji weighting came in 2018, when Facebook cut it to four times the value of a like, keeping the same weight for all of the emotions.
>But it was apparent that not all emotional reactions were the same. Anger was the least used of the six emoji reactions, at 429 million clicks per week, compared with 63 billion likes and 11 billion “love” reactions, according to a 2020 document. Facebook’s data scientists found that angry reactions were “much more frequent” on problematic posts: “civic low quality news, civic misinfo, civic toxicity, health misinfo, and health antivax content,” according to a document from 2019. Its research that year showed the angry reaction was “being weaponized” by political figures.
>In April 2019, Facebook put in place a mechanism to “demote” content that was receiving disproportionately angry reactions, although the documents don’t make clear how or where that was used, or what its effects were.
Control without accountability never lasts
He's a quick way to tell if he's telling the truth. If what he says will either personally benefit him or will hurt others, then its a good chance its true. If what he says is something that will help others but have no benefit to him, then it is a lie.
So the cost is presumably something like 2 missiles. But don't worry, the project is already years behind schedule. The first $75 billion bought us exactly 0 operational missiles in the 15 years since the contract was awarded to the only bidder.
But the title says it all.
"Nuclear modernization" refers to the development of the Sentinel missile to replace the Minuteman III missile. It is arguably not a modernization at all. It is a spectacular example of spreading seemingly endless money around for political ends. It's a $140+ billion boondoggle that has somehow escaped the attention of DOGE while they were hunting down what they claim is $170 billion in fraud and waste in places like the national parks.