The other thread is on its way to getting locked, but I also wanted to have a side conversation before it gets swallowed up by the raging back and forth.
I'll admit that I've been pretty passionate about certain things that Trump has been doing (and not doing) and largely dismissive of the few things he's doing that I agree with. I was able to turn that off for long enough to read this article.
Honestly, I found multiple points in here to be fascinating.
1. Congress' approval rating shot up by 12 points. The article states this is likely due to GOP making large gains 2. Trump's overall approval ratings on the main issues range from low to mid 40's, with a bottom line approval rating of 45% and disapprove rating of 51% 3. Ukraine issue stands out as an outlier, with a relatively large 14% saying they have no opinion. 4. His approval ratings among GOP is extremely high, leading to the second largest gap in approval ratings based on party affiliation. The largest gap occurred during his first term right before the election. The next largest gap was during Biden's term. 5. Trump approval ratings are slightly better than his first term, but still worse than any president since 1953.
I know this is going to turn into a poo flinging (and I say that to myself as much as anyone else), but I did sincerely find this article really interesting.
There is no level of sucking we haven't seen; in fact, I'm pretty sure we hold the patents on a few levels of sucking NOBODY had seen until the past few years.
It doesn't need to be a poo flinging thread, but I guess reality is that it will trend that way.
I'd say the three things that stick out are the approval ratings for Economy, Ukraine and the Middle East.
The Economy is going to slow down even more and inflation will increase IF the talk of Tariffs is real and not a bargaining chip. While Trump's bully boy 'negotiating' tactic is always to threaten and bluster verbal and then often back down - it seems like Trump really believes that tariffs only hurt the other country. As for manufacturing companies promising big investment ... they said the same thing in Term 1. It makes for a splashy headline and Trump takes a bow, the reality is it never happens on the scale they headline with. Obviously covid muddies the water but I'd be interested to know the investment into manufacturing under Trump 1, Biden and when it's all said and done Trump 2. If there is a bump I bet it's negligible. Here's an article showing Apple's $500B announcement is nothing more than a continuation of investments in the USA - APPLE.
I know posters have suggested Trump will 'self destruct' when the reality hits home but I'll be honest and say I think some folks will make excuses for Trump no matter what. Trump is already laying the blame for market trends on Biden despite them being a reaction to his announcements and policies.
Ukraine - we're in wait and see mode from this week with Macron and Starmer - and today with Zelensky. But bottom line is Trump has engaged with the aggressor and given Putin respect while simultaneously calling Zelensky a dictator and suggesting Ukraine started the war. Again - it's like Trump fan doesn't care what he says and thinks it's just Trump getting what he wants. Firstly I think Putin plays Trump like a fiddle and having been ostracized for 3 years was suddenly pulling the strings, and then siding with Russia and China and Nth Korea would have many Americans of all political persuasion turning in the graves. Never mind the rhetoric about the Dems being Commies or whatever - here the USA is buddying up to the 'enemy'. Hard to understand how that gets a free pass.
With Gaza and the middle east - I find the idea of the USA having a permanent stake territory there counter to everything relating to Trumps otherwise isolationist attitudes. Makes zero sense on any level, leastwise peace and stability. And it seems even more likely to promote hate and ire at 'The West' and USA in particular. Permanently. And that doesn't even get into the forced displacement of 2 million Palestinians.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
Did you see where Trump was asked to confirm his stance that Zelensky is a dictator? The gaslighting response was something along the lines of "Did I say that? I can't believe I would say that."
So that was fun.
Blue ostriches on crack float on milkshakes between the sidewalk titans of gurglefitz. --YTown
Did you hear him cut off the prime minister yesterday, "ok thats enough next question...."and a British reporter asked him if he would apologies to Zelensky for calling him a dictator. He completely ignored the question.
It was funny watching Macron fact check trump as well. He made it clear that aid to Ukraine, in total Europe had actually given 60% of the total funding........
It was funny watching Macron fact check trump as well. He made it clear that aid to Ukraine, in total Europe had actually given 60% of the total funding........
Additionally - along with the lie that USA gave more aid, another lie that fell out of Donny's mouth right after that one was a claim that Europe is getting all their aid money back ... err, no.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
SCREW TRUMP! SCREW VANCE! SCREW MUSK! I just witnessed the biggest show of Putin’s cucks ever seen and it was the Fascist Billionaires that the reptards elected! I’d love to have 5 minutes in a ring with all 3 at once, out from behind their security, not hiding behind their money, mano y mano like real men. I’d rid this country of the scourge.
That meeting with Z was the final straw for me. I’m ready to go to war with these people.
And before some MAGA nut job reports me to the FBI, it was figurative not literal. Because you can’t handle what I’d like to see happen literally.
Its good we are really ramping up into severe weather season next Tuesday
Cuts to National Weather Service Leave Forecasters Reeling March 1, 2025 in News Cuts to National Weather Service Leave Forecasters Reeling
Twice a day for years, meteorologists in Kotzebue, Alaska, have launched weather balloons far into the sky to measure data like wind speed, humidity and temperature, and translated the information the balloons sent back into weather forecasts and models. It’s a ritual repeated at dozens of weather stations around the United States.
On Thursday morning, the National Weather Service, which for years has struggled with worker shortages around the country, announced that it had “indefinitely suspended” the launches from Kotzebue because of a lack of staffing.
Hours later, word of mass layoffs began to spread at the Weather Service and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. More than 800 people were expected to lose their jobs, the latest cuts in the Trump administration’s sweeping efforts to reshape the federal work force. As they have elsewhere, the cuts appeared to have been focused on probationary employees who are easier to dismiss.
Though not entirely unexpected, the terminations were shocking to employees of the Weather Service, the government agency responsible for issuing warnings, generating daily forecasts, advising local authorities and collecting the weather data that make these functions possible. The news provoked swift condemnation from people in the field, some lawmakers and the public.
Kayla Besong, a scientist at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii, a part of the Weather Service, said she had hoped her status as an “essential” employee — which required her to continue working without pay in the event of a government shutdown — would mean her job would be spared.
But on Thursday, Dr. Besong, who had begun her role in September, received a termination notice. She said her bosses at the warning center, which monitors earthquake and ocean data around the clock to prepare for possible tsunamis, did not appear to have received advance notice. “I have been waiting for that email for what feels like four weeks,” Dr. Besong said.
There are 122 Weather Service offices spread across the country that provide regional forecasting and issue warnings for things like violent storms. It was unclear this week just how many of the roughly 4,000 Weather Service employees had lost their jobs.
A meteorologist at a Weather Service office in California, who declined to be identified out of fear of retribution, said there were a lot of tears on Thursday among the team. The office lost three probationary employees, an administrative assistant, a new meteorologist who had been on the job for six weeks and a facilities electronics technician, they said.
A Blueprint for Privatization The Weather Service collects observations of the land, ocean and atmosphere using tools like satellites, radar and weather balloons, and that data is used by researchers and private companies across the country. It’s where many tech companies get the information for their weather apps.
In 2023, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, published Project 2025, a 900-page policy blueprint that envisioned a significantly pared-down federal government. Many of the Trump administration’s early actions have followed that plan. When it comes to NOAA, the plan calls for the agency to be dismantled, and proposes that the Weather Service focus on its data-gathering services and “fully commercialize” its forecasting operations.
Some critics of the cuts said they would lead to the loss of employees most likely to help the Weather Service navigate that future. Others raised concerns for public safety.
Louis Uccellini, who served as the director of the Weather Service between 2013 and 2022, called the terminations “cruel” and said many of the newest employees had been hired to address serious local staffing shortages. “The Weather Service is trying to fill critical needs with these new hires,” he said.
Justin Mankin, a climate scientist and associate professor of geography at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., called the layoffs an “astounding move” and said the expertise that would be lost was essential to the functioning of the economy.
“This is not trivial expertise that can be recovered with a few well-placed LinkedIn ads,” said Dr. Mankin, who uses NOAA data in his research on drought variability and what it implies for ranchers, farmers and municipalities that face water shortfalls.
Neil Lareau studies wildfire behavior at the University of Nevada, Reno, and he has seen many of his students go on to work as meteorologists for the Weather Service. He said many of them could find higher-paying jobs in the private sector but were drawn to public service.
Dr. Lareau said young forecasters are integral to the agency’s relevancy as they have the technological skills that their more established colleagues may lack and have familiarity with cutting-edge technology including artificial intelligence, programming and big data.
“These are the people that have that skill set more than anybody else,” he said.
John Toohey-Morales, a longtime television meteorologist in Miami and former Weather Service forecaster, said that the firings raised serious public safety concerns. “I am telling you, the American people are going to suffer from all this,” he said. “Lives are being put in danger.”
As a broadcast meteorologist in a hurricane-prone area, Mr. Toohey-Morales said he relied continuously on the whole of the Weather Service to do his work. “I can’t do my job without the entire scaffolding that NOAA and National Weather Service provides,” he added.
Specialists who study some of the country’s most severe weather events feared that the staff reductions at the Weather Service would hurt the ability to predict those moments in the future.
On Thursday morning, before the layoff notices were issued, Dr. Lareau ran a training session on identifying extreme hazards during wildfires for dozens of meteorologists, most of them with the Weather Service. These incident meteorologists are trained to provide specialized forecasting during events like wildfires. During the recent Los Angeles fires, for example, incident meteorologists helped keep firefighting agencies informed.
Marty Ralph, the director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the University of California, San Diego, said this data is essential to the research his team is doing to improve forecasting for atmospheric rivers that are hugely influential for the West Coast’s water supply. He’s concerned the staff reductions will affect the abundance and quality of the observations.
“Through our research we’ve developed a state-of-the-art regional weather model that’s the best in the world at predicting atmospheric rivers,” Dr. Ralph said. “For us to do those things, we really need observations that NOAA products collected.”
In a statement on Thursday, Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, said that the Trump administration’s cutting of federal workers at NOAA was “flatly illegal,” citing a recent ruling by the Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent review agency that restored the jobs of six federal workers fired from different agencies. “I can guarantee we will be fighting this action in Congress and in the courts,” he said.
Another Democrat, Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington, criticized the terminations at NOAA in a statement on Thursday. “The firings jeopardize our ability to forecast and respond to extreme weather events like hurricanes, wildfires, and floods — putting communities in harm’s way,” she said.
Ms. Cantwell had questioned Howard Lutnick, now the secretary of commerce, whose department oversees NOAA, during Mr. Lutnick’s confirmation hearing, about the plan to break apart NOAA and privatize much of the Weather Service outlined by Project 2025. Mr. Lutnick affirmed that he believed in “keeping NOAA together.”
But in an exchange with Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, during the same hearing, Mr. Lutnick appeared to allow for the possibility that the private sector could take up the forecasts that have traditionally been the work of the Weather Service. “I think we can deliver the product more efficiently and less expensively, dramatically less expensively,” he said.
Jan. 6 prosecutors demoted by Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Washington
Ed Martin, who backed Trump's 2020 election conspiracy theories, moved several supervisors in the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office to deal with low-level cases.
At least seven top prosecutors inside the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia — including some involved in Jan. 6 prosecutions — were demoted to entry-level positions by the new Trump-appointed interim U.S. attorney, multiple officials told NBC News.
Ed Martin, a conservative activist with no prosecutorial experience who President Donald Trump named interim U.S. attorney and who has been nominated to take over the critical office on a permanent basis, informed several supervisors that they had been demoted to handle misdemeanor cases or join a unit that initiates lower-level local cases, according to several multiple sources and messages seen by NBC News.
The lead prosecutors on both the Oath Keepers seditious conspiracy case and the Proud Boys seditious conspiracy case, among the highest-profile Jan. 6 prosecutions, were demoted to work cases in D.C. Superior Court, multiple sources said. So was the chief of the Capitol Siege Section, which was disbanded when Trump took office and pardoned more than 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants.
“They really rubber roomed a lot of people,” one federal law enforcement official said.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington is unique in that it handles both federal crimes in U.S. District Court as well local crimes in Superior Court. Demoting leaders on the federal side of the office to the lowest level of the Superior Court team, one law enforcement source said, “is the biggest f--- you that you can receive,” noting that many of these supervisors worked misdemeanors when they first started out as “baby prosecutors.”
Amongst the prosecutors demoted, multiple current and former law enforcement officials said, were Greg Rosen, who was in charge of the Capitol Siege Section.
“Greg Rosen, who ran the Capitol Siege Section, was, quite literally, the best boss and team leader I’ve ever seen," former Assistant U.S. Attorney Brendan Ballou said in a statement to NBC News. "Like a great football coach, he brought the best out of every player. That Ed Martin is trying to demote or humiliate him speaks to the smallness of Martin and his agenda."
Getting punished for doing their job by the criminal they prosecuted… they are living in the upside-down. Good job MAGA! You’ve weakened our judicial system, our investigative system, our checks and balances in congress, and put a tyrant in the Oval. What’s your next special trick? Signing us over to Putin from the looks of this ish show.
There is no level of sucking we haven't seen; in fact, I'm pretty sure we hold the patents on a few levels of sucking NOBODY had seen until the past few years.
I’m only going to ask once what the hell that means… I know you weren’t calling me a squealing pig and I saw you post asking peen if that was how it’s done. I must have missed the joke or need to put you on the MAGA poster list… I’m pretty sure you don’t support that.
As far as Peen goes, he will damn sure squeal like a big fat stuck pig when they hit his money… it’s coming for all of us, but some will also receive their glass of karma.
I don't know about Peen's financial situation nor is that any of my business.
But will say that some people can afford to have their money hit much more than others. For some it resembles nothing more than a dent in their bumper while for others it's more like their car being totaled.
What I'm waiting to see is those who only have a dent in their bumper giving a damn about those who had their cars totaled.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
Earlier on (actually, I think it was last week but that feels like a month ago) 'peen's response to Musk's slash-and-burn approach to efficiency was "when the fat is cut the pigs will squeal". He was parroting the narrative that the vast majority of beneficiaries were just parasites sucking the country dry vs normal everyday people (not to mention some of the GOP's sacred cows, like veterans and the working class).
Keep in mind that this was early on when the cuts were just beginning and/or were only impacting departments that most people hadn't even heard of... but it was obvious to all but the most dense that these cuts were only the beginning, and were nowhere near strategic enough to prevent major blowback.
Along those lines, I can't wait for the angry Republican townhalls when Musk gets his paws on Medicare/aid.
There is no level of sucking we haven't seen; in fact, I'm pretty sure we hold the patents on a few levels of sucking NOBODY had seen until the past few years.
LOL. Like the $50m on condoms? Or one of the other false statements made so far? There is zero credibility with anything Elon says at the moment ... it's just fodder for the Trumptards.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
You're aware that their facts and figures have already been shown to be wrong, right?
There is no level of sucking we haven't seen; in fact, I'm pretty sure we hold the patents on a few levels of sucking NOBODY had seen until the past few years.
You're aware that their facts and figures have already been shown to be wrong, right?
There is no interest in facts. There is only interest in spamming Cult of Trump Propaganda. That is factual, we've seen multiple inaccurate information posts and never a retraction acknowledgement of even the most egregious lies.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
Republicans advised to avoid in-person town halls after confrontations over layoffs go viral
The chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee advised Republicans in a closed-door meeting that there were other ways to reach constituents.
“They’re professional protesters,” Johnson said, though there is not evidence to back up that claim. “So, why would we give them a forum to do that right now? The best thing that our members can do is communicate directly, frequently, consistently with their constituents, and there are other avenues to do it.”
Hudson also claimed without evidence that the disruptions were from paid protesters. His and Johnson's cautions against in-person town halls are just the latest warnings by top Republican leaders about participating in the events, which give constituents the opportunity to ask questions and voice concerns.
President Donald Trump has also weighed in on the town halls, claiming in a Monday post to his social media site, Truth Social, that people were being paid to cause trouble, although there is no evidence to suggest that.
i really understand why conservative men specifically are becoming more and more lonely in this country.
and it's all their fault.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
To anyone who is a vet-this would equate to cutting about 15-20% of the VA
Trump administration plans to cut 80,000 employees from Veterans Affairs, according to internal memo The Department of Veterans Affairs is planning an “aggressive” reorganization that includes cutting 80,000 jobs from the sprawling agency that provides health care for retired military members. 37 mins ago By STEPHEN GROVES Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Department of Veterans Affairs is planning an “aggressive” reorganization that includes cutting 80,000 jobs from the sprawling agency that provides health care for retired military members, according to an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press.
The VA's chief of staff, Christopher Syrek, told top level officials at the agency that it had an objective to cut enough employees to return to 2019 staffing levels of just under 400,000. That would require terminating tens of thousands of employees after the VA expanded during the Biden administration, as well as to cover veterans impacted by burn pits under the 2022 PACT Act.
The memo instructs top-level staff to prepare for an agency-wide reorganization in August to “resize and tailor the workforce to the mission and revised structure.” It also calls for agency officials to work with the White House's Department of Government Efficiency to “move out aggressively, while taking a pragmatic and disciplined approach” to the Trump administration's goals.
Veterans have already been speaking out against the cuts at the VA, which so far had included a few thousand employees and hundreds of contracts. More than 25% of the VA's workforce are veterans themselves.
In Congress, Democrats have decried the cuts at the VA and other agencies, while Republicans have so far watched with caution the Trump administration's changes.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate committee that oversees veteran's affairs, said in a statement that the Trump administration “has launched an all-out assault" against progress the VA has made in expanding its services as the number of covered veterans grows and includes those impacted by toxic burn pits.
“Their plan prioritizes private sector profits over veterans’ care, balancing the budget on the backs of those who served. It’s a shameful betrayal, and veterans will pay the price for their unforgivable corruption, incompetence, and immorality," Blumenthal said in a statement.
Government Executive first reported on the internal memo.
According to AI 38% of Americans live in apartments. Then there's the fact that of you don't own your home your landlord would have to give you permission. 34% of Americans that live in homes are renters. Then not all communities allow you to have chickens even though more are adopting that all of the time.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
Second, there's also a portion of people that have a backyard, own their house, and STILL wouldn't be allowed to raise chickens (per local laws).
Here in southern Ohio, you can grow the devil's lettuce but couldn't put in a chicken coop.
There is no level of sucking we haven't seen; in fact, I'm pretty sure we hold the patents on a few levels of sucking NOBODY had seen until the past few years.
