So, besides voting (it's too late), What can we do?

[bilby]

Also, they need to immediately start a nuclear weapons program, as do the rest of the nations in Europe.

France and the UK have had their own completely independent nuclear weapons programs since 1946, when Truman reneged on the deal made by FDR to share the results of the Manhattan Project with the UK.

Indeed, the British atomic bomb project (beginning with the MAUD Committee) was established in March 1940, well before the US even started looking into atomic weapons. The Manhattan Project didn't start until August 1942, almost two and a half years after the British began work on atomic weapons, and was largely based on the British Tube Alloys project.

Both the UK and France currently have independent submarine based thermonuclear deterrent forces on active patrol, and have had for over half a century. British Resolution class submarines, carrying British nuclear warheads, were in active service with the Royal Navy from 1968 to 1996; The submarines were armed with American Polaris missiles, under the terms of the Nassau Agreement, whereby JFK agreed to supply missiles to the UK in return for the use of British port facilities for American nuclear missile submarines.

The current British submarine force uses American built Trident submarines and missiles, owned, crewed and maintained by the Royal Navy, and armed with British warheads. It's an American force in the same sense that I drive a Japanese car - I don't ask Shigeru Ishiba for permission before I drive somewhere, though I may be occasionally dependent on spare parts bought from Japan.

The British and American cooperation in regards to nuclear armaments has never been one of British reliance on the Americans; It has been a mutually cooperative partnership in which Britain has more than carried her weight.

The French nuclear weapons program dates from 1954, and is even less integrated with US programs than the British, with US-France cooperation on nuclear weapons in the 1970s and '80s being carried out in strict secrecy.

France currently has both a submarine launched nuclear misslie based on Triomphant Class submarines, and an air launched missile that used Mirage jets as a delivery platform; These planes can be either land based, or launched from the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle.

The French nuclear deterrent force is not only independent from the US, it is also independent from NATO.

 

[unapologetic]

This should be pinned. to the top of this forum on Existence of God(s)

I didn't look for one here, but every atheist forum where I did look had posted definitions of important terms. Did you look for one here?

An explanation wasn't requested or required. Only a definition.

Explanations are required. If, as you say, anything can be a god, then nothing is. In such a case people should explain why their god-definition has merit.

unless there is agreement about what is real and what were just mistakes. But if anyone can learn quickly from past mistakes I believe Musk has the intelligence though.

But Rump does not. And what has muskrat learned? That he was wrong? Or how to get away with it next time?
But they were not "just mistakes" It was mostly malice against regulators that oversee the greedy and care-less. (like Rump and Muskrat).

1) If these employees were providing services we really cared about, the private market would already be providing these services

Spoken like someone with money.
Seriously? You would trust big business, Big Pharma, to police itself, or to do what the CDC & FDA does.
How much did you pay for COVID vaccines? Or are you an anti-vaxer? How many more would have died if Pharma was allowed to charge 'whatever the market will bare'? How many will die now that an anti-vaxer is in charge?

Trump is going for a balanced budget before the end of his term.

How the fuck will giving the rich tax breaks, and the rest of us $5k, balance the budget? The layoffs won't cover the $5k each.

 

[Elixir]

How many will die now that an anti-vaxer is in charge?

Maybe the betting houses will take up the question. I’m trying not to lament too much that which has yet to occur. No matter how probable it looks.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Border control with controlled immigration policy later. Cut off fentanyl, drugs, and people trafficking by cartels. Trump won a 90% Hispanic county on the border because they were overwhelmed each day with thousands crossing the border illegally. If you don't see it they did.

Except it clearly didn't happen. Thousands per day would be a substantial portion of the total number of illegals coming into the country, that doesn't make sense. Thus it was disinformation.

Ditch all culture war issues like trans. DEI, etc, because when out of power you lose way more than being nuetral or keeping old men out of girls locker rooms. Maybe realize that's not a winning issue to lose everything else over. See what's going on right now for reference.

Don't like it, go ahead and keep losing. See how well that works out for you.

Yes, this is what I have been saying. Better to get something than nothing.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If the only way for the Democrats to win is to become populists, and the point of voting for the Democrats is to defeat populism, then what can voters do other than bow down to their new populist overlords?

The people want a lot of stupid shit. They want cheap food, but also to deport the people who harvest it cheaply. They want a balanced budget, tax cuts, and no reductions in spending. They want to eliminate drug abuse, by doubling down on the policies that have made drug smugglers and producers unimaginably wealthy and powerful.

It's impossible to give the people what they want; Not merely politically difficult, but logically and mathematically impossible.

Trump got elected by promising it to them anyway. Harris got defeated because she wouldn't promise anything that was very obviously and indisputably impossible, just because it was popular.

That certainly was part of it. But there was also the problem that the Democrats kept trying to push questionable issues. The election was close, they very well might have been the deciding factor.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Its called "mob democracy". The public takes this route when their political elite who would normally represent them responsibly fail because they become corrupted and no longer trustworthy.

Talk about jumping from the frying pan to the fire!

You're going to find out how little the new elite actually cares. But then you won't have a choice in the matter.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

(1) Never vote for a Republican, ever again.
(2) Register Republican and vote against the incumbents in the primary.
I did, and Rump still got nominated. )-:
So what CAN we do?

We should be anticipating our prospect of receiving our $5000 dodge check which will be real revenue (not just printed currency) we can spend without inflating the rest of our currency. https://www.northjersey.com/story/n...25-stimulus-refund-check-meaning/79290330007/

And if enough of us have confidence this money is not just printed we might actually spend it (versus investing in bitcoin) on US manufactured products that may actually help our own GNP and standard of living to rise.

Virtually all of the "savings" have been errors. If there's a check it will be straight off the printing presses and inflationary.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The DOGE check revenue comes from wages not being paid to the cut employees. NOT printed currency.

And you see nothing.

1) There is nowhere near the number of total employees to come anywhere near that $5k figure.

2) The money that they are no longer paid will come out of the economy.

3) They'll be competing for your jobs, driving down wages.

You're looking up at the rain and not realizing it's coming from his asshole.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

We should be anticipating our prospect of receiving our $5000 dodge check

$650,000,000,000.

… is only zero point six five trillion.
Trump is going to (says he is going to) cut 2 trillion from the budget and raise the debt limit by 4 trillion.
I wonder where RVonse thinks the other FIVE POINT THREE FIVE TRILLION is going to disappear to, and what THAT is going to do to inflation.

Republitards are incredibly innumerate.
No wonder they have so much to complain about. With their apricot picking their pockets, there will be plenty for them to blame on the Dems if there is ever another election.

I don't consider myself much of a MAGA guy in the first place but I very much doubt either Trump or Musk is at all happy with the Republican budget right now. For all the power everyone gives to Trump, he does not seem to be at all able to influence congress to NOT spending more money that we do not have. I would expect both Trump and Musk to be as pissed about the senate budget as you are, but I have not heard any comments from either of them yet.

Yeah, the budget doesn't zero out Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Nowhere near enough grandmas on the ice floe.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And they will be hired back again. First they cut until it does not run and then they bring back only what it takes to be efficient. It is always the standard way they do it.

No one wants to work hard or lose their job which is why management always lies about how much staff they really need.

Except that's not how it works.

When you scream test you only find that which is needed on a day-to-day basis. You do not find safety precautions, you do not find things which are only done occasionally, you do not find redundancy that's needed against spikes in demand. What's left behind is a Jenga tower on the verge of collapse.

Many have compared him with Hitler. The right comparison is probably Mao. The Mao that killed 10% of his population with his bungling.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I'm not going to watch the crap but Musk has not found any fraud.

Just because there are records referring to people who are clearly no longer alive doesn't make for fraud.

1) You don't purge the old data anyway.

2) Spousal benefits. Rich old guy marries a young woman. When she's widowed she doesn't remarry--she's eligible for the same payment he was receiving. He could easily be over 120 and yet benefits are being paid based on his record.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

We should be anticipating our prospect of receiving our $5000 dodge check

$650,000,000,000.

… is only zero point six five trillion.
Trump is going to (says he is going to) cut 2 trillion from the budget and raise the debt limit by 4 trillion.
I wonder where RVonse thinks the other FIVE POINT THREE FIVE TRILLION is going to disappear to, and what THAT is going to do to inflation.

Republitards are incredibly innumerate.
No wonder they have so much to complain about. With their apricot picking their pockets, there will be plenty for them to blame on the Dems if there is ever another election.

Most people think that "ten xillion" is the approximately the same big number, regardless of whether x=tr, b, or m.

"$billion" "$trillion" and "$million" are all just synonyms for "$shitloads", to people who are likely never going to see that amount of money in one place.

Anyone who deals with the scientific world will have no problem seeing the difference.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Thank you for trying to explain this. My son is a federal employee who may be a victim of these lay offs, despite being the only degreed programer/developer in his department which is involved in making sure that our military gets their paychecks. He worked remotely until last year when. he was required to work in the office 2 days a week. He has told me that when he is in the office, there are lots of interruptions, including people coming to his desk to chat while he's in the middle of doing something important. At home, he has a nice office and he shuts the door so he won't be interrupted. He gets more done at home than at work. Since he went from contractor to federal employee recently, his job is endangered for not reason other than that we have a mad man running things.

Yup. Back when going into the office for stuff that had to be hands-on I considered such time very unproductive. Most of it was tied up on things of little to no value and when your real job is something requiring deep thought interruptions are far more disruptive than the time they take. You talk to me 1 minute out of every 5, I'm not going to produce 80%. Even 10% would be unlikely.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I don't know a thing about the government or their immediate strategy. But in private industry its done all the time for savings purposes. They get rid of the senior high paid workers and replace and rehire the absolute needed positions with young people who are the hard workers with low salaries.

Hard workers, low salaries, no institutional knowledge. That means repeating all the mistakes of old.

My wife lived through the same sort of situation although for different reasons. The result was interns (in the medical context, not the business context) doing major surgery without anyone they could even call, let alone any supervision. Of course there is no data on how many patients died on the table.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There seems to be a tacit assumption in this thread that the value of experience and expertise of senior workers has less value than the vim and vigor of the less experienced younger replacements.

The value of experience isn't as easy to measure. Especially since it so often shows up in a negative sense--they know not to do X. Avoiding loss doesn't show up on the bottom line even though there's a lot of value in it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Meanwhile can you explicate with examples? Did the Biden stimulus provide real money or fake money? One certainty is that the Federal debt will balloon to record-setting levels by the end of 2025; will the money owed be real or fake?

Here is a Rachel Maddow video explaining that most of the savings claimed by Musk's DOGE was definitely fake.. Do watch this video please! I'm sure you doubt that a lesbian libtard has anything to teach you, but you are wrong about that. And this material will be on the test.

I'm actually glad you are pointing out the other side that I do not normally see. None of us can get anywhere unless there is agreement about what is real and what were just mistakes. But if anyone can learn quickly from past mistakes I believe Musk has the intelligence though.

You don't see because you won't look. And you still think the rat has intelligence. No, he thinks he does--but what he really is doing is showing how utterly ignorant of things he is. Realistically, nobody has the skill to actually understand it all--a good leader listens to the people who actually do know their domain. He doesn't.

And there's little doubt about the mistakes--anything that's been removed from the list of savings is clearly a mistake. And that's by far the majority of it.

As for my definition of fake money. Fake money is counterfeit currency made in exact imitation of something valuable or important with the intention to deceive or defraud. And that is what our fed does during "monetary easing". The rest of us have to work or produce goods to earn the same paper money the fed simply prints. Only the fed gets to do this without going to jail and the fed isn't even technically our government. Since our treasury borrows more than we can pay back, the fed pretty much has to keep printing money simply to remain solvent at this point. It is also why the fed has said we will never see inflation less than 2% ever again. But that 2% is an inflation tax on the middle class in addition to the rest of our taxes we pay.

But money saved by DOGE is REAL money. Its real because no one had to print more currency in circulation. Those saved dollars were already existing dollars and can be transferred from the fraud and waste account to something more useful (such as a $5000 check) account. If you transfer $5000 from a fired employee salary to refund taxpayers, that will NOT cause inflation. Or at least no more inflation than the fed has already caused.

You transfer $5000 from the economy to the economy. The economy gets no better. The unemployment lines grow, wages go down. You end up worse off.

And where are you getting the notion we won't see inflation below 2%? The Fed aims for 2%, but they must lead their target by a huge amount and inevitably will not be perfect in doing so. The real objective is to avoid dropping below zero, 2% is the margin they need to accomplish that. And despite what the fearmongers say that 2% is pretty much harmless. (And would be completely harmless if we factored the CPI into the tax code.)

2% is heaven compared to what's probably coming.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Unless money is earned in exchange for services or goods that we care about, it is has to inflate. Increasing the supply of dollars without making any more goods is inflation. Surely we can agree that far.

1) No. Inflation is when it's not for goods and services. Whether we care about them is irrelevant.

2) "We care about"--you don't know what that is. As I said in my earlier response, nobody does--it's simply too complex. You have to listen to the people in the various domains, not rule by fiat. Anyone who thinks they can identify whether each spending item is good or not is inherently wrong. They're clearly doing it with a very stupid "AI". Things like deleting Enola Gay photos--clearly the work of an automated system with no understanding of what it's looking at. Perhaps some morons who are ignorant of history are looking at things, but those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Or the stupidity because the clowns do not understand that "transgenetic" is a completely different word than "transgender".

You can then try to then confuse us by saying the good money mixed with bad money still gives a shit deficit anyway. But most of us still realize more good money in the mix is better than making more bad money in the mix.

You were the one asserting the check would all be good money. No, it's inherently entirely blended, you can't say that $X is a good dollar and $Y is a bad dollar.

You can also try to confuse us by saying government employees earn good money by providing services we care about. And you almost have a valid point....until you consider the following:
1) If these employees were providing services we really cared about, the private market would already be providing these services
2) The money these employees are paid is the same money that private citizens could and would have spent on goods AND services that they desired in the first place.

Disagree. There are two factors here:

1) Private industry will only produce things that they can monetize. Something which produces a benefit without producing money will inherently not be funded. (For example, safety regulations.) (Simple illustration of this: there is a candidate for a male birth control pill. Safety: long established. Side effect profile: excellent. Effectiveness: it's known to work to at least some degree--infertility while taking it is a known side effect. But it's a problem to study because it does not stop sperm production. Rather, it does something to them and they won't fertilize the egg. Has anyone done the research? No, because there's no money to be had.) Something which produces a benefit with a major free rider effect (if X is done people benefit if they pay for it or not) will not be funded.

2) Private industry inherently isn't going to do any form of social welfare.

3) Private industry doesn't care about the long term. Set up a company, make some money, extract the money, shut down or bankrupt the company, leave problems for society. Several people in our development have been bitten by this, bad pluming. Builder's long gone, nobody to hold accountable. It's the norm in the mining industry.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

As I said, money is FUNGIBLE. The Debt will grow or shrink. Let us know what you guess the debt will be in January 2026. 2027? 2028?

Trump is going for a balanced budget before the end of his term. So you can keep this post and refer back to see if that goal was achieved.

Personally, I think a balanced budget within 3-4 years is unreal but some of things both Trump and Musk have done have been unreal....so who knows? And if they do fail, I would be satisfied that a valid attempt was made and we went into the darkness fighting.

What I do know for sure is that doing nothing continuing the same path will ensure the ruin of our nation. But I will admit this advantage of being painless until our decline is unstoppable.

Yeah, some of the things they've done have been unreally stupid, that is. The only thing of note either has done is the idea of making an economic rocket rather than the best rocket. Musk didn't actually accomplish it, just funded the people who did. And pulled crap like attempting to launch Starship without a water flood and flame trench. A lot of rocket people were saying what was going to happen--and it did. Yeeted debris everywhere and destroyed the booster. He thought he knew more than the experts.

 

[Jarhyn]

As I said, money is FUNGIBLE. The Debt will grow or shrink. Let us know what you guess the debt will be in January 2026. 2027? 2028?

Trump is going for a balanced budget before the end of his term. So you can keep this post and refer back to see if that goal was achieved.

Personally, I think a balanced budget within 3-4 years is unreal but some of things both Trump and Musk have done have been unreal....so who knows? And if they do fail, I would be satisfied that a valid attempt was made and we went into the darkness fighting.

What I do know for sure is that doing nothing continuing the same path will ensure the ruin of our nation. But I will admit this advantage of being painless until our decline is unstoppable.

Yeah, some of the things they've done have been unreally stupid, that is. The only thing of note either has done is the idea of making an economic rocket rather than the best rocket. Musk didn't actually accomplish it, just funded the people who did. And pulled crap like attempting to launch Starship without a water flood and flame trench. A lot of rocket people were saying what was going to happen--and it did. Yeeted debris everywhere and destroyed the booster. He thought he knew more than the experts.

The most annoying part is that we only have so much delta-v to burn.

We need to make the best rocket, even if it means a lot more time goes into it.

 

[bilby]

We should be anticipating our prospect of receiving our $5000 dodge check

$650,000,000,000.

… is only zero point six five trillion.
Trump is going to (says he is going to) cut 2 trillion from the budget and raise the debt limit by 4 trillion.
I wonder where RVonse thinks the other FIVE POINT THREE FIVE TRILLION is going to disappear to, and what THAT is going to do to inflation.

Republitards are incredibly innumerate.
No wonder they have so much to complain about. With their apricot picking their pockets, there will be plenty for them to blame on the Dems if there is ever another election.

Most people think that "ten xillion" is the approximately the same big number, regardless of whether x=tr, b, or m.

"$billion" "$trillion" and "$million" are all just synonyms for "$shitloads", to people who are likely never going to see that amount of money in one place.

Anyone who deals with the scientific world will have no problem seeing the difference.

So, I am right to say that most people won't see it.

The vast majority of people actively avoid having anything at all to do with the scientific world.