birb_cromble
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User ID: 3236
birb_cromble
1hr ago
If the institute for the study of war is trustworthy, or at least consistently biased enough to use as a metric, it does look like the Russians are making some real pushes.
Check today's map from one on this day two years ago for comparison. They're nibbling at the edges of the northern border.
birb_cromble
5hr ago
Do the officials in question even have that power?
TBH, that's part of why I posted this. My experience with the federal government is largely limited to contract compliance. Once you get into questions of who has the power to do anything, I rapidly get out of my depth.
Would the recent supreme court decision about independent agencies have any impact on that power?
birb_cromble
5hr ago
I hadn't considered how Congress fit into all of this. Thanks for giving me something to ponder.
birb_cromble
6hr ago
RFK Jr. fires two top staffers in leadership shakeup
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. has fired two of the department’s top aides in a leadership shakeup, a spokesperson confirmed Wednesday.
There are two things I'd like to discuss here: the procedural and the inside baseball.
One of the most interesting aspects of the second Trump presidency is that unelected officials are being fired, and that the news is reporting on it.
Historically, firing high ranking officials was not uncommon. In recent years, however, it seems like it has gotten more difficult to do so, up until 2025.
What has changed? Is this entirely downstream of recent court precedent, or has the executive fundamentally changed in some way compared to Biden and Trump I?
There's a lot of supposition and kremlinology below, so if you're not into that, feel free to skip this section.
Moving on, I've seen a few rumors floating around that these firings are due to the officials in question approving the Moderna COVID vaccine while RFK jr was on vacation. If this is true, and that's a big if, it's interesting for a few different reasons.
Historically, federal officials had a lot of power to ignore and subvert the will of their bosses. Usually though, it's passive behavior. Appointed bosses come and go, so sandbagging on unpopular orders is a common strategy. Sometimes (like military leadership lying about force dispositions in Syria), they'll go so far as to elide or bend the truth on topics that won't get back to the president until its too late to matter. Rarely though, do they engage in something that would go against the will of their appointed Boss in a way that is both active AND verifiable.
Give all that - if the reason for the firing is true, it has some interesting implications.
- It's possible that these officials knew RFK jr didn't want the approval to go through but did it anyway, with full knowledge of the consequences
- The officials thought they could get away with contravening the wishes of the appointee Boss without consequences
- They genuinely thought that the approval was in accordance with the wishes of their appointed Boss.
- Somehow the bureaucracy is so automated that these officials didn't even know the approval happened at all.
To be honest, I'm not sure which possibility is most interesting, because they all have a lot of downstream implications for federal government.
- If #1 is true, this is a rare case of a public official making a principled stand and accepting the consequences. I respect that, even if I disagree with the stand itself. It makes me wonder if it might cause other officials to take similar stands.
- This possibility (#2) is interesting because it makes me realize that I don't actually know what the stated purpose of agency officials is. Is their highest goal to serve the purpose of the agency, or the will of the electorate? Even if they claim one or the other, what processes do we have to ensure that's true?
- Possibility #3 is interesting because it implies that these individuals either see a VERY different RFK Jr than the public sees, or they have a fairly warped view of his positions. It seems odd that someone could climb the DC power ladder and lack the skills to suss out the intentions of their appointed Bosses, so if this is true, it suggests that RFK jr has very different public and private positions.
- Possibility #4 is more terrifying than interesting. The fact that it's boring and awful and suggests that no one actually has a hand on the tiller makes me think it's also the one that's most likely to be correct.
birb_cromble
19hr ago
Southerners who didn't care about good food.
birb_cromble
21hr ago
Yes. I am satisfied, mostly because you're not trying to cram me into a WC-shaped hole.
birb_cromble
21hr ago
That is... That is an uncharitable take on what I said.
First of all, I'm not WC. Please do not treat me like I am WC. Please do not put WC's words in my mouth. Please do not assume that my intentions and his are the same. We are not the same person. We have different goals and intentions.
Now that's out of the way, you're reading a much stronger version of what I wrote than what I intended to write. Did I say "hellhole" anywhere? No, I did not. That's your interpretation through the lens of whatever other biases you have. WC might have said it, but I did not. I didn't mention Black Americans either. I'm not even sure why you're bringing it up now.
What I did say is that, in my experience, crimes get weirder as illegal immigrant migrant labor increases in small communities. I provided some examples of that. I did not make inferences about larger civilizational impacts, because once again, I am not WC and I do not share in his motivations.
All I can say is that you can tell me that I'm wrong, but I'm still the one that spent an afternoon hosing human shit out of my cousin's toolbox.
birb_cromble
21hr ago
This seems like some remarkably bad faith on your part.
First, you claim that nothing like this happens. Then you Darkly Hint that no one will provide examples, because they have a convenient excuse not to do so.
Then two people provide an example, despite your Dark Hinting.
After that, you employ what I can only call a reverse isolated demand for rigor to blow it off as an isolated incident and not useful as any kind of corroboration for lived experience. You and other mods have banned people for that kind of bad faith behavior in the past.
At this point, I'm going to ask you outright. What would you actually require to believe anything that I have said? Because from where I'm standing, it seems like your mind is already made up.
birb_cromble
23hr ago
who the hell cooks rice and beans in the same pot
People who were never taught how to cook and didn't have the time or ability to learn.
birb_cromble
23hr ago
One was in the York/Dover area, and one was around Frederick.
One would have been around 2005, and one would have been around 2008-2009. I had already left the area, so I don't have firsthand information.
birb_cromble
23hr ago
I like them now that I'm an adult who has learned how to cook them properly.
As a kid being served rice and beans boiled in the same pot so one is over cooked or the other is under cooked? Not a fan.
birb_cromble
23hr ago
Also for @Amadan, who asked in another thread.
https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/fairfax-county-butt-slasher-to-be-sentenced-friday/1924072/
Pimentel was arrested near a shopping mall in Peru, in January 2012. He was extradited to the United States in December.
birb_cromble
1d ago
especially in the Baltimore -DC corridor
That might be a big part of the distinction here.
articles would be tantamount to asking someone to dox themselves,
I'll give some location details anyway. I'm not talking about Chevy Chase and Darnestown. I'm talking about Rocky Ridge and Harney. These were poor, fucked up areas that only got more fucked up. The people living between the beltways just assumed it was rednecks doing redneck shit and never looked any deeper. Given the age of the events and the crap sack quality of the local newspapers, I doubt that I could find anything without going to microfiche at a local library. Since I'd rather set myself on fire than go back there, you can retain your sense of disbelief.
birb_cromble
1d ago
Believe me. After we got over the initial shock, the topic was the butt of our jokes for weeks.
birb_cromble
1d ago
I spent some time in Virginia, Maryland, and South Central PA about 20 years ago.
I can absolutely corroborate the profound weirdness of the crimes that started occurring as the illegal immigrant population increased in a given area.
We always had a lot of bar fights, domestics, and drunk driving arrests, but as the area started getting flooded with migrant labor, the profile of the crimes started changing.
There were not one, not two, but three distinct men who were arrested for stabbing women in the ass in stores. Specifically women, specifically in the ass, and specifically in stores.
We had another rash of complaints about a serial truck bed shitter.
Later, we had a rash of cattle mutilations that turned out to be... I guess you'd call it poaching? Rustling? Either way, it was illegal immigrant orchard workers cutting their own steaks from the local dairy cows.
Don't even get me started on the cock fighting and dog fighting operations.
Believe me when I say that the character of a place does change once the illegal immigrant laborer population reaches a certain critical mass.
birb_cromble
1d ago
The actually poor whites and blacks won’t eat rice and beans.
Are you kidding me? That was a staple in my destitute Appalachian community growing up. When you could afford dinner, that was definitely one of the most common meals. Nobody liked it; it wasn't as good as half a can of tomato soup made with milk and a bunch of crackers, but it sure beat having a big glass of water for dinner.
birb_cromble
2d ago
I don't have a Twitter account, and I don't go out of my way to follow twitter e-celbrities.
Maybe you can help me out here. What's this "Hanania" guy's deal?
Everything I see about him here on the motte seems to suggest that his entire schtick can be reduced to "poor people are gross moral failures and I'm clearly not poor. Are you poor? Are you a gross moral failure?"
Am I missing something here?
birb_cromble
3d ago
Smaller studios like A24 are promising
If you haven't seen it, A24 distributed a film called Warfare that was actually pretty good.
birb_cromble
3d ago
It's all second and third order connections, but it's a suspiciously large number of second and third order connections.
There is very little in the way of actual policy outcomes that is easily traced to Biden’s senescence.
How much of that is due to small changes in policy positions, and how much of that is due to the entire liberal establishment utterly stonewalling any effort to find out?
birb_cromble
4d ago
would be impossible without cooperation from practically the entire Department of Corrections
One of the parties implicated in this affair recently blew the dicks, assholes, and/or parinea clean off 3,000 people in multiple countries with devices the targets willingly put on their own bodies.
Given that display of competence and coordination, it feels like your assessment of what is or is not possible in this case may be overly conservative.
birb_cromble
9d ago
You're right. I can't type for crap tonight. I meant III, which is rated for 7.62x39
birb_cromble
10d ago
5.56 out of a 20" barrel can defeat level IV plates at 100 yards, and possibly up to 200, depending on the bullet construction. Velocity is a hell of a thing.
If that's the case, then isn't ISW admitting Russian advances an even stronger signal of accelerated Russian gains?
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