Blah blah blah 2

[Rmarsh]

Originally Posted by spence

You need some new material Marsh. Looks like the courts are slowing this illegal power grab considerably.

It’s been asked several time but you keep dodging the question so I’ll ask it again. Do you believe in the Constitution?

Ive asked questions....several. Only one answered. Of course I believe in the Constitution. See how easy. As far as debates...i will pass.....waste of time with TDS patients.
Will you hypocrites be taking the fight to the streets ...as your elite democrat leaders....Maxine Waters and Chuck Shummer have suggested? I doubt it....sackless.

[Got Stripers]

Originally Posted by spence

You need some new material Marsh. Looks like the courts are slowing this illegal power grab considerably.

It’s been asked several time but you keep dodging the question so I’ll ask it again. Do you believe in the Constitution?

His response to your question is right out of the mini me play book with the classic deflection, followed by the usual venom and Trump favorite lines. It’s not that he can’t debate, it’s because he won’t knowing it would expose his inability to defend Trump, project 25 and Musk’s moves as constitutional and abiding by the rule of law.

[wdmso]

The Associated Press says reporter was barred from White House event
The wire service said the decision stemmed from a style guidance to continue using the name Gulf of Mexico instead of Gulf of America.

Sounds like something RMARSH would do. It petty it’s childish. And Authoritarian

But the behavior is from the POTUS …. And yet many like RMARSH cheer thinking Trumps showing strength… .. by renaming the Gulf. And banning the AP and not bending the knee ������

[Pete F.]

Actually banning the reporter is a flat out, clear cut violation of the first amendment.
Last night in the Oval Office, President Harry Bolz and Trump claimed to have knowledge of vast waste, fraud or maybe just things that don’t fit their agenda.
To date they have provided no evidence of anything.
One of them claimed that a female government employee’s net worth increased by 20 million during her tenure and claimed that was some kind of evidence of something.
Since the election both Presidents, who are employed by the government, net worths have increased by multiples of that.
One of them gained most of his net worth through government contracts and assistance (from both the USA and the CCP), the other one consistently violates the Emolument clause of the Constitution.
There’s evidence of both of those.
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[Pete F.]

This is interesting for two reasons, the substance of the OpEd and the fact that it’s in Bezo’s WAPO which since the election has been silent about the administration’s actions.

From the WAPO

Why DOGE is unconstitutional
Trump is acting extra-constitutionally. Only Congress or the Supreme Court can stop him.

By Alan Charles Raul
Alan Charles Raul served as associate White House counsel under President Ronald Reagan and as general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget under Reagan and President George H.W. Bush. He currently serves as board secretary of the Society for the Rule of Law and is a lecturer at Harvard Law School.

President Donald Trump, his appointees, acting officials and quasi-official outsiders are in the midst of a radical restructuring or termination of government employees, agencies and programs. Whether this is in all, many or some regards desirable is debatable. Also debatable is whether the 49.8 percent of the electorate who elected Trump want all of this, and whether the 50.2 percent who voted for Kamala Harris or a third-party candidate want any of it.
What is not debatable, however, is that Congress has not authorized this radical overhaul, and the protocols of the Constitution do not permit statutorily mandated agencies and programs to be transformed — or reorganized out of existence — without congressional authorization.

The Constitution is well known to interpose meaningful checks and balances and a separation of powers among the responsibilities of the executive, legislative and judicial branches. It is also well understood that the respective branch’s powers and duties will intersect and overlap. Fundamentally, however, all legislative power belongs to Congress, and executive power to the president. The judiciary steps in when the parameters of shared authority get complicated or confusing and constitutional lines are crossed.
The radical reorganization now underway is not just footfaulting over procedural lines; it is shattering the fundamental checks and balances of our constitutional order. The DOGE process, if that is what it is, mocks two basic tenets of our government: that we are nation of laws, not men and that it is Congress which controls spending and passes legislation. The president must faithfully execute Congress’s laws and manage the executive agencies consistent with the Constitution and lawmakers’ appropriations — not by any divine right or absolute power.
Where the president identifies policy areas that need reform or spending that needs to be supplemented, reduced or eliminated, the Constitution empowers him to recommend such measures as he finds “necessary or expedient” to Congress for it to dispose one way or the other, or alternatively ignore.
Yes, the president may advance his own policy agenda — including, of course, the ability to recommend reforms to Congress that he believes necessary or expedient. But there is no reading of the Constitution that allows any president to claim that a political mandate, or a political promise made, obviates or supersedes the role for Congress. It is the House and Senate that “make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for … the Government of the United States or in any Department or Officer thereof.”
Even under the most aggressive view of the president’s “unitary executive” control over the entire executive branch and independent agencies, it is Congress’s sole authority to appropriate and legislate for our entire government. The president basically directs the executive branch within the contours prescribed by Congress, subject to constitutional checks and balances. To be sure, the president and Congress share policy responsibility because the president recommends budgets and necessary and expedient measures to Congress, whose bills the president can sign into law or veto. But in the end, the president is constitutionally stuck with the policies for the federal government that Congress enacts and appropriates. No one man in America is the law — not even a Trump or an Elon Musk.
So, how can the radical overhaul Trump and Musk are undertaking be reconciled with our constitutional order? Quite simply, it cannot be. Congress must step in to enact this radical transformation — or the Supreme Court must stop it.
In the past several years, the court has provided unmistakable direction that Congress, and not the executive, determines the scope and policy for the country. The court even narrowed the president’s previously long-held entitlement to deference when interpreting ambiguous laws and policies.
Specifically, the Trump-Musk quest for government efficiency is led by a “department” that Congress did not establish, by unelected operatives who exercise overwhelming authority without appointment under the appointments clause, who are not subject apparently to any checks and balances, who are not faithfully executing the laws Congress has appropriated and legislated, and who are in the process of eliminating whole agencies, programs and millions of employees without any congressional authorization whatsoever. And they are doing so without explaining and recommending such measures to Congress (or to the public, for that matter).

If all this is not a “major question” for Congress to decide with respect to the impact and consequence for America, then nothing is.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...rts-doge-musk/
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[Pete F.]

Since it’s Lincoln’s birthday today

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathe...utm_medium=ios

On February 12, 1809, Nancy Hanks Lincoln gave birth to her second child, a son: Abraham.
Abraham Lincoln grew up to become the nation’s sixteenth president, leading the country from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865, a little over a month into his second term. He piloted the country through the Civil War, preserving the concept of American democracy. It was a system that had never been fully realized but that he still saw as “the last, best hope of earth” to prove that people could govern themselves.
Lincoln grew up in rural poverty as wealthy enslavers took over prime land in his family's home state of Kentucky and pushed them across the Ohio River to Indiana, where Nancy Lincoln died. From there, they moved on to the frontier state of Illinois, where Abraham sowed seed, hoed fields, grubbed roots, cut trees, made fences, and harvested crops both at home and for farmers to whom his father hired him out for wages, for the elder Lincoln never managed to get his feet under him after leaving Kentucky.
In 1831, finally an adult, Abraham set out to make his mark in the world, as did thousands of other young men in his dynamic era. But making it on his own wasn’t much easier for the young Lincoln than it had been for his father. He settled in the town of New Salem, a village of about a hundred people on a bluff above the Sangamon River, where he failed as a storekeeper, then cobbled together various jobs, eking out a living splitting rails and making deliveries. Government appointments, first as a postmaster and then as a surveyor, kept him afloat and made him well enough known that in 1834, voters elected him to the state legislature, and he was on his way to prominence.
Lincoln’s time as a young man on the make had made him think hard about the relationship between Americans and their government. In his era, elite southern enslavers insisted that government had no role to play in the country except in protecting property, a concept of government that permitted them to amass fortunes thanks to the labor of their Black neighbors. But Lincoln had watched his town of New Salem die because its settlers—hard workers, eager to make the town succeed—could not dredge the Sangamon River to promote trade by themselves.
Lincoln later mused, “The legitimate object of government is ‘to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves,’… as public roads and highways, public schools, charities, pauperism, orphanage, estates of the deceased, and the machinery of government itself.”
Once elected to the presidency, Lincoln joined with members of his new Republican Party to make the government work for the American people. They created national money and the income tax. They took land from speculators and gave it to men willing to farm it. They established public colleges to enable poor men to get an education, the Department of Agriculture to make sure poor men had access to good seeds, and transcontinental railroads so poor men could both get to western lands and get their products back to eastern markets. And they used the power of the federal government to end human enslavement in the United States except as punishment for crime.
A generation later, under Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, progressives at the turn of the twentieth century expanded on Lincoln's understanding of the role of government in supporting the American people. In that era, corrupt industrialists increased their profits by abusing their workers, adulterating milk with formaldehyde and painting candies with lead paint, dumping toxic waste into neighborhoods, and paying legislators to let them do whatever they wished.
Those concerned about the survival of democracy worried that individuals were not actually free when their lives were controlled by the corporations that poisoned their food and water while making it impossible for individuals to get an education or make enough money ever to become independent.
To restore the rights of individuals, progressives of both parties argued that individuals needed a strong, active government to protect them from the excesses and powerful industrialists of the modern world. Under the new governmental system that Theodore Roosevelt pioneered, the government cleaned up the sewage systems and tenements in cities, protected public lands, invested in public health and education, raised taxes, and called for universal health insurance, all to protect the ability of individuals to live freely without being crushed by outside influences.
Reformers sought, as Roosevelt said, to return to “an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.”
In the 1920s, the idea that the government should be run as a business eclipsed Roosevelt’s progressive government, but after the Great Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression, Democrats under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s offered a “new deal for the American people.” That New Deal meant that the government would no longer work simply to promote business, but would also regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, and promote infrastructure. World War II accelerated the construction of that active government, and by the time it was over, Americans quite liked the new system.
After the war, Republican Dwight Eisenhower embraced the active government. He explained that in the modern world, the government must protect people from disasters created by forces outside their control, and it must provide social services that would protect people from unemployment, old age, illness, accidents, unsafe food and drugs, homelessness, and disease.
He called his version of the New Deal “a middle way between untrammeled freedom of the individual and the demands of the welfare of the whole Nation.” One of his supporters echoed Lincoln when he explained, “If a job has to be done to meet the needs of the people, and no one else can do it, then it is the proper function of the federal government.” Both Republicans and Democrats embraced this idea, which became known as the “liberal consensus.” In the second half of the twentieth century, they expanded the role of government to protect civil rights, the environment, access to healthcare and education, equal opportunity in employment, and so on.
But those who objected to the liberal consensus rejected the idea that the government had any role to play in the economy or in social welfare and made no distinction between the liberal consensus and international communism. They insisted that the country was made up of “liberals,” who were pushing the nation toward socialism, and “conservatives” like themselves, who were standing alone against the Democrats and Republicans who made up a majority of the country and liked the new business regulations, safety net, infrastructure, and protection of civil rights.
That reactionary mindset came to dominate the Republican Party after Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980. Republicans began to insist that anyone who embraced the liberal consensus of the past several decades was un-American and had no right to govern, no matter how many Americans supported that ideology. And now, forty-five years later, we are watching as a group of reactionaries dismantle the government that serves the needs of ordinary Americans and work, once again, to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of an elite.
The idea of a small government that serves the needs of a few wealthy people, Lincoln warned in his era, is “the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent.”
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[Pete F.]

A historic amount of corruption.

The 11 federal agencies so far targeted for firings or dismantling by Elon Musk have more than 30 ongoing investigations into his companies.
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[PaulS]

I wonder if his fanboys realize he constantly lied to them about everything he was going to do on day one and have such low respect for themselves that they don't care or is it they aren't smart enough to realize he lied to them and that he doesn't care that he lied to them?

[Got Stripers]

Originally Posted by PaulS

I wonder if his fanboys realize he constantly lied to them about everything he was going to do on day one and have such low respect for themselves that they don't care or is it they aren't smart enough to realize he lied to them and that he doesn't care that he lied to them?

Don’t write Marsh’s profile description, it will just result in more insults and left deep state liberal hatred. He thinks he is getting a laugh out of this, ironically the last laugh will be on the MAGA cult after potus screws the economy and sends the costs of goods much higher, after they thought they elected him to fix that. We all get a chuckle out of his sooooo predictable rants, but at times it’s almost sad to see anyone that brainwashed and without the capacity to distinguish lies from truth. Anyone care to predict his response to this, he is a one trick pony.

[Pete F.]

Tesla stores and charging stations are now protest hotspots!

Turns out, unelected Elon Musk and his fake government agency, DOGE, aren’t sitting well with folks watching democracy get destroyed.
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[Pete F.]

Elon Musk changed his name on his Twitter account (where he has 217 million followers) to Harry Bölz (hairy balls) in the event you were hoping a sane adult had access to all of your personal information and was running the country.
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[Pete F.]

The USAID debacle will make Benghazi look good.
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[Got Stripers]

ABA President William Bay warned that the new administration's "chaotic" approach is threatening the rule of law and said the ABA will act to ensure legal processes are followed — adding that courts will serve as a “bulwark” against constitutional violations.

I’m confused did’t Trump pledge an oath to uphold the constitution?

[Pete F.]

Crazy: Putin is now openly flattering Trump for threatening tariffs on our allies, claiming it shows how strong Trump is. That's telling. Putin knows tariffs could weaken the western alliance, so he's egging Trump on!
And FFOTUS is repeating it
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[Pete F.]

Mayor Adams, Putin and his Oligarchs, Elon, January 6, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon, Ross Ulbricht, Charles Kushner, Andrew Zabavsky and Terence Sutton, etc.

“For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.” — Peru’s General Óscar Benavides or FFOTUS
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[Pete F.]

The "unanimously" elected is a nice touch. Makes it even more North Korea-like.

“President Donald J. Trump was just unanimously elected Chairman of the Board of the prestigious Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The President stated, "It is a Great Honor to be Chairman of The Kennedy Center, especially with this amazing Board of Trustees. We will make The Kennedy Center a very special and exciting place!"”
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[wdmso]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

The "unanimously" elected is a nice touch. Makes it even more North Korea-like.

“President Donald J. Trump was just unanimously elected Chairman of the Board of the prestigious Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The President stated, "It is a Great Honor to be Chairman of The Kennedy Center, especially with this amazing Board of Trustees. We will make The Kennedy Center a very special and exciting place!"”
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petty petty Man .. and again his supporters

On Monday, Trump named Grenell as the interim executive director of the Kennedy Center in a post on Truth Social. The position plunged leadership at the Kennedy Center into confusion, as the position “executive director” does not exist.

[Pete F.]

The Trumplicans have confirmed Tulsi Gabbard.

The real-world impact here is that the USA relies on intelligence sharing with a number of allies, the most critical being under the Five Eyes pact. I can't help but think they will be loath to share significant intelligence with the USA for fear their sources will be compromised.
The damage to our intelligence gathering sets us back decades.
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[Pete F.]

The United States is now an open kleptocracy. The Constitution has been suspended to allow the wealthiest man in the world to loot and destroy the federal government.

Elon Musk is working to transform X, his social media platform, into a virtual wallet where people can send money to each other. He likely has all your information. Digital payment platforms have come under intense scrutiny by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but that is likely to ease.

Tesla is forecast to win the largest State Dept contract of 2025 -- $400 million for "Armored Tesla" -- according to procurement documents reviewed by drop site news
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[Pete F.]

“I’m here today to directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States from being the primary guarantor of security in Europe.”

US Secretary of Defence, February 12, 2025.

Everything changed today.
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[wdmso]

Elon Musk's Tesla on Tuesday opened an enormous $200 million battery plant in Shanghai, near its carmaking Gigafactory, deepening the company's investment in China even as its CEO serves in an administration picking a trade war with Beijing.

Find me a negative comment from musk involving china . On any topic.

I bet you can’t
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[Got Stripers]

No longer helping with EU security, guessing withdrawal from Nato will be coming. No longer looking into bribery, no enemies list at AG confirmation, except now there is. Don’t worry maga change might be only painful at first wink wink.

[Pete F.]

If you’re bored
1. Google Gulf of Mexico.
2. "Gulf of America" will be at the head of Google's answer.
3. Click on the three little dots to the right of "Gulf of America".
4. Select "Send Feedback"
5. Click on "Gulf Of America" text.
6. Select "Inaccurate content".
7. Select "Incorrect" and type in whatever text you want such as "The correct name of this body of water is "Gulf of Mexico".
The more reports to Google the merrier....
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[Pete F.]

Did FFOTUS plan and implement project 2025?

https://youtu.be/MLbh7GXw0Es?si=ZuCDc1d9Wki5imbk
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[Rmarsh]

This thread is going great. Surpassed my expectations.
Emotionally broken TDS sufferers coming together to share their pain. That is what I intended. You're Welcome

[RIROCKHOUND]

Originally Posted by Rmarsh

This thread is going great. Surpassed my expectations.
Emotionally broken TDS sufferers coming together to share their pain. That is what I intended. You're Welcome

How about instead of the TDS bull#^&#^&#^&#^&, you try and contribute a thought or opinion?
Your in the trades, and you look to do great work from your posts.
Is a 25% tariff on Steel and Aluminum good for the country? We can maybe ramp up steel production (it sort of came up in 2018 when Trump tried this) but we don't have the raw materials to do that for Aluminum as most of the Bauxite (the ore) is found in more tropical climates. How about if we further tariff Canadian lumber?

[Pete F.]

Originally Posted by RIROCKHOUND

How about instead of the TDS bull#^&#^&#^&#^&, you try and contribute a thought or opinion?
Your in the trades, and you look to do great work from your posts.
Is a 25% tariff on Steel and Aluminum good for the country? We can maybe ramp up steel production (it sort of came up in 2018 when Trump tried this) but we don't have the raw materials to do that for Aluminum as most of the Bauxite (the ore) is found in more tropical climates. How about if we further tariff Canadian lumber?

Steel is currently at less than capacity and tariffs will do nothing other than drive up prices for the cheapest steel that is produced more economically elsewhere (Nucor rebar prices increased $2 per hundred weight last week on the threat alone)

Steel.org analysis published weekly
In the week ending on February 8, 2025, domestic raw steel production was 1,675,000 net tons while the capability utilization rate was 75.2 percent. Production was 1,726,000 net tons in the week ending February 8, 2024, while the capability utilization then was 77.7 percent. The current week production represents a 3.0 percent decrease from the same period in the previous year. Production for the week ending February 8, 2025 is up 1.1 percent from the previous week ending February 1, 2025 when production was 1,656,000 net tons and the rate of capability utilization was 74.4 percent.

Aluminum tariffs if applied to all imported aluminum will increase domestic prices and likely reduce exports.

Aluminum industry doesn’t produce only US production. Aluminum.org is a North American entity.
Canada because they have abundant cheap hydroelectric power is the major producer of aluminum from bauxite.
Both the USA and Canada further process the raw material into finished products. This is either used in the USA or exported.
Bauxite which aluminum is produced from is mined in Australia, Guinea, India, Brazil and China.
The USA mines produce less than 1% of the world’s bauxite.

On the lumber market
Canadian mills are closing along with USA mills.
The day of the small sawmill growing into a bigger and bigger company are gone.
The modern wood industry has timber harvesting by machines, logs get a coded identification, log transportation is the same, mills have no humans inside during operation.(the sawyer is in a booth and optimization is by computer)
Workers only do repairs and maintenance.
The capital costs are large and margins are small.
It looks like the lumber industry will be controlled by several very large corporations who will have monopolies.
The current regimes elimination of regulations on large corporations will accelerate that.
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[wdmso]

Originally Posted by RIROCKHOUND

How about instead of the TDS bull#^&#^&#^&#^&, you try and contribute a thought or opinion?
Your in the trades, and you look to do great work from your posts.
Is a 25% tariff on Steel and Aluminum good for the country? We can maybe ramp up steel production (it sort of came up in 2018 when Trump tried this) but we don't have the raw materials to do that for Aluminum as most of the Bauxite (the ore) is found in more tropical climates. How about if we further tariff Canadian lumber?

Wishful thinking he is just a incapable of having an adult conversation based on facts. I’m starting to think the reason he knew Biden had dementia is because he suffers from it as well. Anger is a side effect of dementia

And yet the

Missouri AG sues Starbucks, says workforce is ‘more female and less white’

Should the Missouri AG see the construction industry for hiring more males than females. And being less white.

And we’re off ! The Trump affect is in full swing. MAGA logic on full display

[wdmso]

just in.

Trump administration set to purchase $400 million worth of armored Teslas

After reports circulated Wednesday night of the State Department's intent to purchase Tesla vehicles, the document was edited, at 9:12 p.m., and now says the federal contract is for $400 million worth of "armored electric vehicles," but the word "Tesla" was removed..

And like MAGIC. suddenly no further conflict of interest or
no waste fraud or abuse is a concern

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/13/g-s1-...armored-teslas

[Rmarsh]

Originally Posted by RIROCKHOUND

How about instead of the TDS bull#^&#^&#^&#^&, you try and contribute a thought or opinion?
Your in the trades, and you look to do great work from your posts.
Is a 25% tariff on Steel and Aluminum good for the country? We can maybe ramp up steel production (it sort of came up in 2018 when Trump tried this) but we don't have the raw materials to do that for Aluminum as most of the Bauxite (the ore) is found in more tropical climates. How about if we further tariff Canadian lumber?

I understand your frustation. Id be crushed too if my candidate got such an ass whooping. Canadian lumber is overpriced garbage.