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"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C.S. Lewis ( on government response to and other crises?)

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Thanks for the welcome, #@freemo Here's my .

I'm...
• a dad of a handful of kiddos, married, living in Colorado.
• a Christian in the Anglican tradition, and suppose I'm an unaffiliated conservatarian.
• a reader, working through the great novels as well as easier/fun books and nonfiction.
• a card and board game player and am happily teaching more to my kids as they get older.
• short on free time. I enjoy a philosophical pipe as I read and/or reflect, and occasionally get my guitar or bow/arrows out to learn new skills.
• a software developer... and have been for a very long time, now in the world of APIs and cloud development (CRM/SFDC).

I'm old enough to remember news networks declaring a constitutional crisis over the covfefe typo. Signalgate seems to be covfefe 2.0.

uspol, confusion 

So... Those who won the electoral college vote and the popular vote are working to decrease the spending while increasing transparency of the federal government.

Those who supported the losing candidates say this shrinking of government and more visibility is... The end of democracy, fascism, and a reason to out themselves as terrorists, blowing things up, doxxing people who... drive electric cars?

SecondJon boosted

CNN currently showing a special on a DOGE employee who posted to instagram during business hours. Wildly inappropriate, "insulting," "Are you kidding me!?"

I know this is an attack on DOGE, but... the reason is because... of government waste.

So CNN is sort of asking for DOGE to DOGE even harder.

Weird argument.

Oh, tariffs as foreign election interference. It's a bold strategy, let's see how that works out for them... No one show them the popular vote...

Vas  
Canadian Premier David Eby Trump's tariffs - “We focus on Republican states and their products, because we know who’s doing this to us. We know who...

Canadian PMs: Trump is bad because... Tariffs on others is an attack on one's own population.

Also Canadian PMs: We'll apply tariffs even harder.

𝐇𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐏 悪いバナー  
>🇨🇦 New Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says he will continue trade wars with the United States. >"My government will keep tariffs on ...

Ottawa removing half of federal internal trade barriers in response to tariff threats from the US

"Removing all internal trade protections could lower prices by up to 15 per cent, boost productivity by up to seven per cent and add up to $200 billion to the domestic economy, according to Anand."

Comment: what an amazing move. Why has the Canadian government kept these anti Canadian regulations in place until now? I guess.... The Trump Effect is making Canada better.

cbc.ca/news/politics/anand-ott

Hahaha. The article says nothing has been banned, but I appreciate the outage in defense of JD Vance. The wild outage about rules being applied evenly, even to the VP is hilarious.

TomWellborn3  
Trump’s book bans are so absurd they’ve caught J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy in the dragnet. Thanks to his own administration’s anti-DEI purge, his ...

The narrative has shifted! What was "Trump will fire anyone who isnt loyal to him personally, which makes him Hitler" is now, "Trump is laying off people regardless of their loyalty, and that's...uh...worse...somehow"

TomWellborn3  
That sums up the situation perfectly. Trump's mass firings are indiscriminate, and his supporters are now realizing that "draining the swamp" just ...

😂 The AP takes on the claims about suicidal security improper payments, reporting that according to the Biden administration ONLY "$71.8 billion" in was fraudulent and that the agency "clawed back" a whopping $31 billion. Yep, they clawed back a huge 0.05% of the waste? (it's very early, is that decimal right?)

The article says most of those billions were sent to loving people, but the goes on to say the data is wildly inaccurate without dates of birth, so no one knows. And the Biden admin saw the $71.8 BILLION and assessed that it would take $9 million to fix the system to stop the waste so decided not to.

Way to teach Trump a lesson. Nothing to see here, only $71.8 billion in waste, hardly anything.

Sam Litzinger  
Tens of millions of dead people aren't getting Social Security checks, despite Trump and Musk claims https://apnews.com/article/social-security-pa...

With being paused or all out shuttered, please consider increasing your generosity toward organizations that truly do align with your values.

There are good people doing amazing work local to you and around the world.

What if the impact of cutting back on that government spending was an outpouring of cheerful, voluntary, generosity?

This is a story about how management found out about bad actions of an employee and proactively acted with urgency to fire the employee and correct the situation, even before the customer was aware of it. The response has been outage and a lawsuit against the company that did the right thing. Sad.

Crooks&Liars  
Racist Pig Wrote The N-Word On A Woman's Oil Change Sticker https://crooksandliars.com/2025/02/racist-pig-wrote-n-word-womans-oil-change?utm_source...

Would the Biden admin have been very upset had they found out about this happening on their watch?

Axios  
SCOOP: U.S. agents arrested more than 21,000 unauthorized immigrants in November as President Biden's term wound down — a pace the Trump administra...

uspol, Trump, universities, science 

I've seen posts bemoaning the attack on that 's team has talked about defunding projects.

I wonder if universities should consider charging tuition, rather than being free and open to everyone, to be able to fund this important work. 🤔

Uspol, media, huffpo 

I read a piece on huffpo about the real impact of dictator Trump downsizing government (as one does when one is a dictator). It came down to:

Return to office decisions and feeling terrified of what might happen.

Everyone in non government jobs has also had to work through return to office decisions.

So... Ultimately, according to the article, it's the same working location decision everyone is going through and media-driven fear.

I was expecting more.

Who had Trump Takes Gaza on their 2025 bingo card? Wierd news day.

Certainly will claim work today.

Over the weekend I read shock pieces in both US and Canadian news from the experts warning of the dire impact of tariffs that were about to bring North America to it's knees... overnight skyrocketing fuel costs, hundreds of thousands just in Ontario to become unemployed.

Reports today are that before the Canadian and Mexican tariffs even kicked in (scheduled for tomorrow), both Mexico and Canada have committed significant funds and action to secure the borders?

SecondJon boosted

A Canadian explains President Trump's tariffs.

@BabylonBee on the confirmation hearings of the week

SecondJon boosted
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