#republican shame

[filosofablogger]

A Slap In The Face

Imagine that your best friend sends you a text message saying, “Help!!!  I am bleeding profusely and in so much pain I can hardly move.  Please come ASAP!  I need you!”  And you respond, “Sorry, I’m busy doing my nails right now.”  THAT is exactly what the United States has done to our friend and ally, Ukraine.  Speaker Mike Johnson and the House Republicans have refused to consider more aid to…

[geezerwench]

maga Republicans show you who they are.

[giantkillerjack]

the average person doesn't expect you to be a perfect ethical consumer, that's not possible for the vast majority of us. but what youre saying is it's better to do nothing at all and choose the worst possible options (sweat shops, overseas shipping waste, idea/product theft, all wrapped up in SHEIN) than to put even the tiniest effort in where you can.

[they are referring to this post]

What I said was "some people are doing literally everything they can to survive and have no extra bandwidth to spend extra time and money on their purchases, and it is cruel and therefore un-punk to gatekeep punkness and add additional shame to these people's lives based on that fact."

I think it's still a good thing to try to ethically consume; I literally never said it wasn't. I had never even heard of SHEIN before. Rather, I am much more concerned about what I saw as arbitrary gatekeeping based on ability and income.

And frankly how dare you claim that I am supporting sweatshops and abuse by saying that this additional work you are demanding (in this case, presumably, vetting every clothing company you buy from) is not always possible for people. It is not a light accusation to accuse me of supporting abuse.

"How dare you say we piss on the poor", Etc. 🙄 this isn't Twitter. You are determined to enforce moral purity, but you are failing to see the nuance.

Because when I say "no extra bandwidth," I mean no extra bandwidth. This is not the "car shows it's on E but actually secretly it has a lot of gas left" situation that abled people constantly assume disabled people mean when they say they are at their limit.

This is "the car has stopped moving, and to move it I'd have to break my body pushing it." This is "at a certain point, people will hit a wall in terms of money and time and energy, and any energy spent after that comes directly out of their life force."

So the argument "okay but just spend a little more time money and energy actually" is not a valid one.

And the argument "if you are not able to do this specific task, then it means you're not doing anything else to make the world a better place" doesn't exactly impress me either. You said yourself that it is impossible to be a perfectly ethical consumer for most people.

How do you know what else people are doing to resist oppression? How many hours per week until your standards are met?What if someone works 3 jobs? Does that mean it's harder to be a good person if you're poor?? Why do you get to decide what specific avenue of bettering the world is the most morally repugnant or acceptable? What kind of proof of goodness and effort would make you satisfied enough to lay off on the shame?? Who are you helping??

Clothing is a fundamental human need, and some of us have to buy cheap fucking clothes quickly. Billionaires are buying their seventh yacht this month. The people who own fast fashion companies are abusing their workers and putting local affordable clothing stores out of business - and this applies for basically every company with price points that low because governments are failing to regulate corporations to enforce basic human rights.

I have $300 to spend on a new wardrobe as my old clothes have fallen apart or become too small. Do you have a way for me to get a new winter coat, 3 flannels, 10 shirts, 3 dress shirts, new sandals, 10 pairs of pants, 5 bras, 12 pairs of socks, and 10 pairs of underwear within that budget and also definitely 100% ethically sourced, with free returns in case it doesn't fit? Or will I simply have to use the cheap stores?

I have about an hour to spend on this per week. Many mainstream stores doesn't make clothes in my size, and I am now in *year 5* of needing an electric wheelchair and being unable to get one; plus I live up a flight of stairs, so I can't even bring my walker out with me - so thrift shopping is not gonna cover this. Should I continue to wear small and tattered clothing until I have the time, money, and energy to meet your standards?

Did you know there are more empty homes in this country than homeless people? If I decide to splurge on only 100% ethically-produced products, and I can't make rent, and I become homeless, are YOU going to be there for me?? Or are you too busy litigating the endless tiny shames of poverty in your own community?

So I ask you again, are you SURE this is where you want to direct your punk energy?

Because there are a whole lot of rich people relying on people like us punching down and to the side instead of looking up to see where the money is going.

Because energy and time, as it turns out, are limited resources. And I would never expect you to secretly have more than you claim to have.

[jasondamien93]

😡🤮🤢

[tomorrowusa]

Tim Miller at The Bulwark shows that there is no such such thing as a "moderate" Republican in the US House of Representatives.

The caucus, as of early Tuesday, is falling in line behind MAGA extremist Gym Jordan.

As Tim explains, it would take only 5 Republicans to vote against Jordan out of the 221 in the House. That's just 2.27% of House Republicans.

It's helpful to know that 18 House Republicans represent districts carried by Joe Biden. They need to be more afraid of being defeated in 2024 than they are of a weasel like Gym Jordan.

If you are represented by one of these 18, contact their offices in Washington (before 10 AM EDT Tuesday) and let them know you'll work and donate to defeat them if they vote to confirm a January 6th coup-plotter. Over a dozen are indeed from very blue states.

There are very few MAGA extremists worse than Gym Jordan in the House; I estimate they are in the high single digits.

If you need contact information for your rep, enter your ZIP+4 here at the House site...

Find Your Representative | house.gov

In addition to those 18, if you have a GOP rep who's NOT a member of the "Freedom Caucus" it may be worth an attempt to poke their conscience if they haven't yet committed to Jordan.

EDIT: A group called the Republican Accountability Project released an anti-Jordan ad which few Democrats would probably disagree with.

[markfaustus]

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[juanabaloo]

There's a Treasury coup going on, led by Musk. The Nazi Republicans are fine with this and the legacy (traditional) media doesn't seem to care. (It start Friday sometime. Friday Jan 31st, 2025) I'll link to the source, but I wanna include the full article from Wired in text here.

They have identified the 6 engineers (supposedly they are engineers) who are part of this coup. These people have names, they are not nameless shadows. May they never know a moment of peace in their godforsaken lives.

[Personally I have zero issue with them being young. The real problem is their lack of experience and training with confidential data, lack of security clearance, and them participating in a fucking coup.]

Vittoria Elliott Additional reporting by Zoë Schiffer and Tim Marchman Wired.com Feb 2, 2025 2:02 PM

The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover

Engineers between 19 and 24, most linked to Musk’s companies, are playing a key role as he seizes control of federal infrastructure.

The engineers are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian (also known as Cole Killian), Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran. None have responded to requests for comment from WIRED. Representatives from OPM, GSA, and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment.

(Source: Wired.com)

Full article under the cut, including some initial details like university and internship jobs for some of the six.

Elon Musk’s takeover of federal government infrastructure is ongoing, and at the center of things is a coterie of engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college. Most have connections to Musk, and at least two have connections to Musk’s longtime associate Peter Thiel, a cofounder and chair of the analytics firm and government contractor Palantir who has long expressed opposition to democracy.

WIRED has identified six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24, according to public databases, their online presences, and other records—who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, tasked by executive order with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The engineers all hold nebulous job titles within DOGE, and at least one appears to be working as a volunteer.

The engineers are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran. None have responded to requests for comment from WIRED. Representatives from OPM, GSA, and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment.

Already, Musk’s lackeys have taken control of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and General Services Administration (GSA), and have gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, potentially allowing him access to a vast range of sensitive information about tens of millions of citizens, businesses, and more. On Sunday, CNN reported that DOGE personnel attempted to improperly access classified information and security systems at the US Agency for International Development and that top USAID security officials who thwarted the attempt were subsequently put on leave. The Associated Press reported that DOGE personnel had indeed accessed classified material.

“What we're seeing is unprecedented in that you have these actors who are not really public officials gaining access to the most sensitive data in government,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “We really have very little eyes on what's going on. Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what's happening because these aren't really accountable public officials. So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world.”

Bobba has attended UC Berkeley, where he was in the prestigious Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology program. According to a copy of his now-deleted LinkedIn obtained by WIRED, Bobba was an investment engineering intern at the Bridgewater Associates hedge fund as of last spring and was previously an intern at both Meta and Palantir. He was a featured guest on a since-deleted podcast with Aman Manazir, an engineer who interviews engineers about how they landed their dream jobs, where he talked about those experiences last June.

Coristine, as WIRED previously reported, appears to have recently graduated from high school and to have been enrolled at Northeastern University. According to a copy of his résumé obtained by WIRED, he spent three months at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer interface company, last summer.e [e seems to be a typo]

Both Bobba and Coristine are listed in internal OPM records reviewed by WIRED as “experts” at OPM, reporting directly to Amanda Scales, its new chief of staff. Scales previously worked on talent for xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, and as part of Uber’s talent acquisition team, per LinkedIn. Employees at GSA tell WIRED that Coristine has appeared on calls where workers were made to go over code they had written and justify their jobs. WIRED previously reported that Coristine was added to a call with GSA staff members using a nongovernment Gmail address. Employees were not given an explanation as to who he was or why he was on the calls.

Farritor, who per sources has a working GSA email address, is a former intern at SpaceX, Musk’s space company, and currently a Thiel Fellow after, according to his LinkedIn, dropping out of the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. While in school, he was part of an award-winning team that deciphered portions of an ancient Greek scroll.

Kliger, whose LinkedIn lists him as a special adviser to the director of OPM and who is listed in internal records reviewed by WIRED as a special adviser to the director for information technology, attended UC Berkeley until 2020; most recently, according to his LinkedIn, he worked for the AI company Databricks. His Substack includes a post titled “The Curious Case of Matt Gaetz: How the Deep State Destroys Its Enemies,” as well as another titled “Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense: The Warrior Washington Fears.”

Killian, also known as Cole Killian, has a working email associated with DOGE, where he is currently listed as a volunteer, according to internal records reviewed by WIRED. According to a copy of his now-deleted résumé obtained by WIRED, he attended McGill University through at least 2021 and graduated high school in 2019. An archived copy of his now-deleted personal website indicates that he worked as an engineer at Jump Trading, which specializes in algorithmic and high-frequency financial trades.

Shaotran told Business Insider in September that he was a senior at Harvard studying computer science and also the founder of an OpenAI-backed startup, Energize AI. Shaotran was the runner-up in a hackathon held by xAI, Musk’s AI company. In the Business Insider article, Shaotran says he received a $100,000 grant from OpenAI to build his scheduling assistant, Spark.

“To the extent these individuals are exercising what would otherwise be relatively significant managerial control over two very large agencies that deal with very complex topics,” says Nick Bednar, a professor at University of Minnesota’s school of law, “it is very unlikely they have the expertise to understand either the law or the administrative needs that surround these agencies.”

Sources tell WIRED that Bobba, Coristine, Farritor, and Shaotran all currently have working GSA emails and A-suite level clearance at the GSA, which means that they work out of the agency’s top floor and have access to all physical spaces and IT systems, according a source with knowledge of the GSA’s clearance protocols. The source, who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation, says they worry that the new teams could bypass the regular security clearance protocols to access the agency’s sensitive compartmented information facility, as the Trump administration has already granted temporary security clearances to unvetted people.

This is in addition to Coristine and Bobba being listed as “experts” working at OPM. Bednar says that while staff can be loaned out between agencies for special projects or to work on issues that might cross agency lines, it’s not exactly common practice.

“This is consistent with the pattern of a lot of tech executives who have taken certain roles of the administration,” says Bednar. “This raises concerns about regulatory capture and whether these individuals may have preferences that don’t serve the American public or the federal government.”

Additional reporting by Zoë Schiffer and Tim Marchman.

[bitchesandbroomsticks]

Politicians are..."Bad" you say?

It really is funny how quickly republicans will say that the government isn't running right because politicians are corrupt and bad people and make money off of us while voting against our best interests and lying to us and not being efficient and not upholding the values a civil servant is supposed to...

...and then blame it all on democrats.

like, when I told my dad waaay back during trump's first campaign that I agreed that all politicians should subject to higher scrutiny and that the government isn't working as efficiently as they should and that congress should have term limits and age limits and that at the end of the day both parties were more like different sides to the same coin and both sides should be held accountable and not blindly trusted?

he said "Exactly, those damn democrats are-" and i tuned him out because it was clear that when i said "both sides have corruption" he heard "I agree the democrats corrupt" and couldn't be assed to dive any further.

I knew that back in 2015 and the same mentality that won his first presidency is at the core of his win this time, just grotesquely aged and morphed through rage feeds and publicly platformed conspiracies and racism.

[thashining]

Why aren’t these members in California?

@aaronparnas

[theshadowsingersraven]

[cheugyphobe]

i hate that i have such a hard time saying no to my dad. there’s a family reunion in goddamn idaho in the summer and i have no real reason to not go other that i don’t wanna spend 5 days somewhere i’ve never been to and flying on a plane by myself would put me into a panic attack right this second

[historyforfuture]

According to the usa President that israel is defending itself against its enemies 🙃🫴are these the enemies👇 🙃??????! or u r expecting them enemies of the future ???

🛑 70% of the deaths r children 🤔🙃

[nagia-pronounced-neijia]

.

[venusinmyrrh]

amor et psyche please!

(Great card! I will not be posting the name of it as I am not trying to get my post flagged.)

Shame is not useful to you right now. Defy judgment as you pursue your joy unapologetically, and make sure it's on your terms, exactly how you like it. Luxuriate. Ascend. Anything you find pleasure in is worth enjoying fully.

readings are now closed!

[badolmen]

Do not underestimate my ability to seduce* shitty white guys with my good innocent Irish Catholic girl swag.

*force them to confront their biases and reconsider their political ideologies

[protoslacker]

There are, strictly speaking, some things you could call links between the two men. But they are inconsequential. Concluding that “These claims are exaggerated” is to entirely miss the actual meaning of the claims. It minimizes them. It whitewashes them. It virtually endorses them. The journalistic issue should not be whether there is some factual basis in there somewhere, but that Trump and congressional Republicans are engaging in deceitful racist incitement.

Dan Froomkin at Press Watch. “Fact-checking” is a feeble, inadequate way to respond to racist, antisemitic incitement

This article is really good in a way that I would like journalism to be like it. Froomkin doesn’t just point and say “this problem is really bad,” but gives example of doing something good in response to the problem.

The New York Times amplifying anti-Semitic tropes is wildly irresponsible. It’s evidence of how far along the road to Facism we are.