133 responses to “Sandbox – 25feb25”

1. 

   scenes

   06 March 2025

   Speaking of Pelosi, these people really should age out.
   https://x.com/thegaywhostrayd/status/1897437278500167686

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2. 

   Gregory

   06 March 2025

   Hillbilly Ejaculate…
   Your schadenfreude over the Trump speech was amazing. Keep it up!

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3. 

   Don Bessee

   06 March 2025

   BU BYE –
   https://www.foxnews.com/politics/state-department-revokes-first-visa-foreign-student-linked-hamas-supporting-disruptions
   😉

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4. 

   Scott O

   06 March 2025

   from a friend in Canada:
   “”Trade-Based Money Laundering is the Fentanyl Crisis”: Sources expose Chinese-Mexican-Canadian Crime Convergence”
   As usual – follow the money.
   This blog has lots of other interesting articles.
   https://www.thebureau.news/p/trade-based-money-laundering-is-the

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5. 

   Don Bessee

   06 March 2025

   Here is one for the TDS set –
   A CBS News/YouGov poll surveyed people who planned to watch Trump’s Congress address and then sought their view of the speech immediately after it concluded.
   The poll found 76 percent said they “approve” of Trump’s address
   https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-congress-speech-poll-approve-2039740
   😉

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6. 

   Resurrected Hillbilly

   06 March 2025

   Sad Gregory AKA-the solid or semi-solid waste material expelled from the digestive tract through the anus during the process of defecation
   Check your sources, I don’t believe I made a comment re Trump dump.

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7. 

   Gregory

   06 March 2025

   So db, that means folks like Hillbilly Ejaculate is with the bottom 24%, aka the losers.

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8. 

   Don Bessee

   06 March 2025

   True but they will not listen –
   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/contributor-democrats-are-drifting-dangerously-out-of-sync-with-the-american-people/ar-AA1ApsD2?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=8574a0c0730a42cc97df196d380e5346&ei=71
   😉

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9. 

   Don Bessee

   06 March 2025

   The lemmings going off the cliff of everyone is racist –
   Despite the rhetoric of the last decade, trying to win elections by exhorting Americans to exorcise their racist demons seems a dubious endeavor and one that, as scholar Adolph Reed has noted, risks “undermining the possibility of a political-economic challenge coming from the lower class.” Under the tutelage of Robin DiAngelo and earlier anti-racist gurus, social justice progressives have been trying for decades to train away the racism they believe is harbored in every “white-skinned body.”
   The result? Democrats have now lost the trust of working America. If Democrats’ favorite refrain is that the voters are the problem, the party may as well fold up its tent.
   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/democrats-still-don-t-get-why-trump-won/ar-AA1AoaRP?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=8574a0c0730a42cc97df196d380e5346&ei=206
   😉

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10. 

    Resurrected Hillbilly

    07 March 2025

    I guess tariffs on Russia are really going to hurt Putin where it counts… because we do so much business with Russia, right?
    “Based on the fact that Russia is absolutely ‘pounding’ Ukraine on the battlefield right now, I am strongly considering large-scale Banking Sanctions, Sanctions, and Tariffs on Russia until a Cease Fire and FINAL SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT ON PEACE IS REACHED,” Trump said. “To Russia and Ukraine, get to the table right now, before it is too late. Thank you!!!”

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11. 

    Gregory

    07 March 2025

    Hillbilly Ejaculate 906p:
    “Check your sources, I don’t believe I made a comment re Trump dump.”
    You did, Ejack, you did!
    You sat quietly through it all, rising to applaud enthusiastically only when some staffer did a drunken fenderbender in a parking lot. Bravo to a happy ending!

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12. 

    fish

    07 March 2025

    Posted by: Resurrected Hillbilly | 07 March 2025 at 08:05 AM
    Yeah…..I miss President Autopen too.

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13. 

    fish

    07 March 2025

    Killing the Department of Education…..a more wretchedly mismamed organization I can’t imagine…..to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?
    

    “Maximum Security For US”: DoE Head Plans $20 Billion Refill Of Depleted SPR After Biden Drain

    That’s a good trade!!
    https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/maximum-security-us-doe-head-plans-20-billion-refill-depleted-spr-after-biden-drain

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14. 

    scenes

    07 March 2025

    The petroleum reserve strikes me as a canonical example of good ideas gone bad.
    No doubt it was originally presented as a way to deal with war, hard cut-offs from overseas suppliers, etc.
    Instead, it’s become something of a political football in manipulating Presidential polls and actively managing the economy by both ‘sides’. Bummer.
    I asked Grok about what the DoE is actually for, and according to the Great Mind it’s mainly a way to disburse money (no doubt in a very ‘fair’ fashion and not just to your special friends), produce standards, worry about teacher training.
    I sure as hell can’t think of any reason why a state can’t deal with that. If you absolutely had to have the thing, you might as well just have a DoE with one employee who writes 50ish checks based on population size…or not collect the money to begin with.

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15. 

    Gregory

    07 March 2025

    Without the DoE and piles of money, there’d be no way for Feds to pounce on a new education fad and direct the entire country to advance to the rear.

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16. 

    Gregory

    07 March 2025

    Regarding the DoE as a check writing service, if states want more money they can borrow it or increase taxes on themselves.
    The Feds are in a big monetary hole and need to stop digging.

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17. 

    fish

    07 March 2025

    Posted by: Gregory | 07 March 2025 at 10:27 AM
    The Feds are in a big monetary hole and need to stop digging.
    👍

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18. 

    scenes

    07 March 2025

    re:Gregory@10:24AM
    I was amusing myself by chatting with Grok about the DoE and matters educationish.
    One thing that Mr Grok pounced on was poor poor Mississippi vs. New York and somehow that the DoE was responsible for helping Mississippi to make up the difference in spending. Naturally, Mississippi has higher SAT scores than NY. Why? Far fewer takers of the test in MS. OK, what state has about the same rate of test taking? South Carolina as it turns out. NY spends about 2.5x as much money per student as SC with roughly the same SAT scores. Why? Dunno, although I suspect it’s because everyone’s brother-in-law needs a no-show job.
    lol what a scam that whole system is. Too much lucre floating around to keep out the parasites but we’ve had the extra bonus of insane political activists to add to the mix.
    “The Feds are in a big monetary hole and need to stop digging.”
    No problem, just declare leaves to be money.
    It seems to me that Mississippi has been used as an example for forcing national policy so much that they have to be kept down. You can’t build a heaven on earth without a comparison hell I guess.

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19. 

    Don Bessee

    07 March 2025

    When there is a hot war on little country over virtue signaling goes out the window and war preparations suddenly matter –
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/poland-to-withdraw-from-ottawa-treaty/ar-AA1AtN2g?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=8200bae20d7742638df6b50dd1481ea3&ei=11
    😉

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20. 

    Don Bessee

    07 March 2025

    That should be one little country over

    In your face you mutha mullahs –
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/message-to-iran-u-s-b-52s-operated-alongside-israeli-f-35is/ar-AA1Atzr7?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=59f347e7cce9423991c81f879418167e&ei=87
    😉

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21. 

    Scott O

    07 March 2025

    Just delightful – it is truly amazing the waste and fraud in the fed govt once some one takes the time to look:
    “According to the report, The TSA has more people doing “full-time union work” vs. performing actual screening functions at 86% of US airports. Put another way, 374 out of 432 federalized airports have fewer than 200 TSA Officers to perform screening functions, while the rest are paid by the government but work “full-time on union matters” and do not retain certification to perform screening.”
    And we all know which political party benefits from “full-time union matters”.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/dhs-ends-tsa-collective-bargaining-after-bombshell-finding-more-full-time-union-workers

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22. 

    Don Bessee

    07 March 2025

    Someone is running for prez –
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/newsom-orders-redo-of-california-s-landmark-anti-plastic-rules-citing-cost/ar-AA1Au85j?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=5b15de67a8944f518c31265b99c60874&ei=79
    😉

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23. 

    Don Bessee

    07 March 2025

    The 25 billion on homeless will be part of the conversation and it will all look like this –
    “LAHSA did not contemporaneously verify that the service provider invoices reflected actual services provided at the given location before approving payment,” wrote staff at Alvarez & Marsal Public Sector Services, who completed a court-ordered assessment of the City of Los Angeles’s homelessness spending. “Instead, it appears that LAHSA approved service provider invoices based solely on a high-level review of supporting financial documents, which did not include receipts or clear indications of the specific services delivered, allowing for potential misalignment between the services being reimbursed and those outlined in the service providers’ contracts.”
    A&M also said it could not actually assess much of the spending because ”insufficient financial accountability led to an inability to trace substantial funds allocated to the City Programs.”
    “Invoice reviews by the City and LAHSA typically centered on reconciling aggregate amounts in financial reports, rather than verifying the quality, legitimacy, or reasonableness of expenses,” wrote A&M.
    Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsay Horvath, who has motioned to shut down the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority that is a joint project of the City and County of Los Angeles, said this is more evidence that LAHSA must be replaced.
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/court-finds-why-la-s-homelessness-spending-fails-to-produce-results/ar-AA1AtX2m?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=5b15de67a8944f518c31265b99c60874&ei=10
    😉

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24. 

    The Estonian Fox

    08 March 2025

    fish @ 09:11 AM
    Didn’t Trump mention that the U.S. had $20B in bitcoin that was donat.. errr confiscated from various sources, which would go into a (bitcoin) strategic reserve? Now we have $20B allocated to increase our (oil) strategic reserve.
    My math might be rusty, but I think $20B from reserve #1 = $20B going to reserve #2.

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25. 

    The Estonian Fox

    08 March 2025

    You need to be clear that DoE (Dept of Education) is not equal to DoE (Dept of Energy).

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26. 

    The Estonian Fox

    08 March 2025

    Scott O @ 04:51 PM
    I’ll wait for the official announcement that X% of TSA employees have been fired, or even furloughed, before I believe it.
    Or I’ll believe it if there is a paragraph in the Congressional Record that 3 U.S. Representatives complained that they had to wait in line for 15 minutes just to board their flight to the West Coast at Dulles last week. But this week, they breezed right through.

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27. 

    scenes

    08 March 2025

    TSA = jobs program for the unskilled.
    For all I know, we’ll need more of those over time just to keep people out of deviltries.
    You have to admit that passenger screening is low-hanging fruit for both AIs and sensor systems. Of course, an AI will be ‘biased’ but no one will know why.
    Honestly, I’m surprised how little hue and cry there’s been about how POC ARE DISPROPORTIONATELY EFFECTED!!! when doing these DoEducation, HUD, DHS kind of layoffs. Maybe it’s just that Democrats are still in such disarray as putting so many chips on men-in-dresses was a bad call.
    (hmmm, now that I think of it, does the federal government really need HUD?)

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28. 

    Scott O

    08 March 2025

    “…does the federal government really need HUD?)”
    The fed govt needs all their alphabet agencies.
    Does the American public need HUD?
    Hell No. The cities and states can manage to waste their own money on that.

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29. 

    Scott O

    08 March 2025

    Summer isn’t even here yet…
    “Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, more than a dozen violent or destructive acts have been directed at Tesla facilities, according to court documents, surveillance photographs, police records and local media reports reviewed by The Washington Post.”
    Ah – the Dem Hate Machine is coming to life. The Dem leaders are spouting hate and violence in hopes of another ‘Summer Of Love’.
    And we were told it was those Ultra Right Wing MAGA that were the violent threat. Like almost everything the Dems told you – a deflection lie.
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/crime/general/anger-at-elon-musk-turns-violent-with-molotov-cocktails-and-gunfire-at-tesla-lots/ar-AA1AvY9u

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30. 

    Resurrected Hillbilly

    08 March 2025

    Claude Malhuret, a French physician, lawyer and politician who has served as a member of the Senate since 2014, representing the department of Allier. A member of Horizons (HOR),[1] he has presided over the centre-right The Independents – Republic and Territories (LIRT) parliamentary group in the Senate since 2017, speaking to the French Senate Tuesday March 4 2025:
    “President, Mr. Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen Ministers, My dear colleagues,
    Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is crumbling, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened.
    Washington has become the court of Nero, a fiery emperor, submissive courtiers and a ketamine-fueled jester in charge of purging the civil service.
    This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose more customs duties on you than on his enemies and will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.
    The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is all about. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down before Putin, but Xi Jinping, faced with such a shipwreck, is probably accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.
    Never in history has a President of the United States capitulated to the enemy. Never has anyone supported an aggressor against an ally. Never has anyone trampled on the American Constitution, issued so many illegal decrees, dismissed judges who could have prevented him from doing so, dismissed the military general staff in one fell swoop, weakened all checks and balances, and taken control of social media.
    This is not an illiberal drift, it is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only one month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution.
    I have faith in the strength of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency. We were at war with a dictator, now we are fighting a dictator backed by a traitor.
    Eight days ago, at the very moment that Trump was rubbing Macron’s back in the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops.
    Two days later, in the Oval Office, the military service shirker was giving war hero Zelensky lessons in morality and strategy before dismissing him like a groom, ordering him to submit or resign.
    Tonight, he took another step into infamy by stopping the delivery of weapons that had been promised. What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: face it.
    And first of all, let’s not be mistaken. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltic States, Georgia, Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is to return to Yalta, where half the continent was ceded to Stalin.
    The countries of the South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it.
    What Putin wants is the end of the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with its first principle being the prohibition of acquiring territory by force.
    This idea is at the very source of the UN, where today Americans vote in favor of the aggressor and against the attacked, because the Trumpian vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to spheres of influence, the great powers dictating the fate of small countries.
    Mine is Greenland, Panama and Canada, you are Ukraine, the Baltics and Eastern Europe, he is Taiwan and the China Sea.
    At the parties of the oligarchs of the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago, this is called “diplomatic realism.”
    So we are alone. But the talk that Putin cannot be resisted is false. Contrary to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Russia is in bad shape. In three years, the so-called second largest army in the world has managed to grab only crumbs from a country three times less populated.
    Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, the demographic collapse show that it is on the brink of the abyss. The American helping hand to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made in a war.
    The shock is violent, but it has a virtue. Europeans are coming out of denial. They understood in one day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands and that they have three imperatives.
    Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American abandonment, so that it holds, and of course to impose its presence and that of Europe in any negotiation.
    This will be expensive. It will be necessary to end the taboo of the use of frozen Russian assets. It will be necessary to circumvent Moscow’s accomplices within Europe itself by a coalition of only the willing countries, with of course the United Kingdom.
    Second, demand that any agreement be accompanied by the return of kidnapped children, prisoners and absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia and Minsk, we know what agreements with Putin are worth. These guarantees require sufficient military force to prevent a new invasion.
    Finally, and this is the most urgent, because it is what will take the most time, we must build the neglected European defence, to the benefit of the American umbrella since 1945 and scuttled since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
    It is a Herculean task, but it is on its success or failure that the leaders of today’s democratic Europe will be judged in the history books.
    Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. This is to recognize that France has been right for decades in arguing for strategic autonomy.
    It remains to be built. It will be necessary to invest massively, to strengthen the European Defence Fund outside the Maastricht debt criteria, to harmonize weapons and munitions systems, to accelerate the entry into the Union of Ukraine, which is today the leading European army, to rethink the place and conditions of nuclear deterrence based on French and British capabilities, to relaunch the anti-missile shield and satellite programs.
    The plan announced yesterday by Ursula von der Leyen is a very good starting point. And much more will be needed.
    Europe will only become a military power again by becoming an industrial power again. In a word, the Draghi report will have to be implemented. For good.
    But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament.
    We must convince public opinion in the face of war weariness and fear, and especially in the face of Putin’s cronies, the extreme right and the extreme left.
    They argued again yesterday in the National Assembly, Mr Prime Minister, before you, against European unity, against European defence.
    They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain at the beck and call of Putin.
    Peace for the collaborators who have refused any aid to the Ukrainians for three years.
    Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But in the last few days, the public humiliation of Zelensky and all the crazy decisions taken in the last month have finally made the Americans react.
    Polls are falling. Republican lawmakers are being greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is becoming critical.
    The Trumpists are no longer in their majesty. They control the executive, the Parliament, the Supreme Court and social networks.
    But in American history, the freedom fighters have always prevailed. They are beginning to raise their heads.
    The fate of Ukraine is being played out in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, and here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means for their common defense, and to make Europe the power that it once was in history and that it hesitates to become again.
    Our parents defeated fascism and communism at great cost.
    The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century.
    Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.”

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31. 

    fish

    08 March 2025

    Clearly pontification by someone as deluded as only a French politician or former editor of an unimportant newspaper in the sierra foothills can be.
    Really jeffy….what makes you think that anyone cares about the bleatings of a man who has deliberately imported the worst of Third World and knows his time is over.
    Putin is the least of France’s problems!

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32. 

    Scott O

    08 March 2025

    Some French guy…
    “But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency. We were at war with a dictator, now we are fighting a dictator backed by a traitor.”
    Uncovering and cutting waste and fraud in the fed govt is “harm”?
    How is Trump a “dictator”?
    Hillbilly has no answers, no comment, no brain – just a stupid cut and paste from an ignorant loud mouth in France.
    Typical stupidity from the left.

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33. 

    fish

    08 March 2025

    What happens when an otherwise favored member of middle management is instructed….say by the people puppeting a senile grifter politician…. that accommodating the “new meat” that the democrat party needs to try to maintain their grip upon the levers of power, all 15 million of them, is more important than the needs of the city and citizenry.
    https://archive.is/qMDMy

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