Category: Trumpism

Weather Vain

Lies and Untruths, Science!, Trumpism

Here’s a consequence of being entrusted to collect critical data, then using that data to peddle a false narrative:

The US government’s weather agency has been dismantled by the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) after it was accused of peddling “misinformation”.

Hundreds of weather forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were fired last week as part of Donald Trump’s plans to slash the federal workforce.

In total, at least 800 civil servants are thought to have lost their jobs, including meteorologists, radar specialists and crews of hurricane hunters, who fly aircraft into storms to help forecasters, according to CBS.

Of course, out come the apocalyptic doomsayers:

The job cuts have triggered protests at the agency’s headquarters in Maryland, with some scientists and lawmakers warning that removing staff involved in predicting natural disasters will “endanger American lives going forward”.

No, they won’t — at least, no more than they ever did before.  There are several other avenues of getting such warnings — from private enterprise — and not from some Gummint malignancy.

But here’s the critical part, from someone who’s been doing the hard work of tracking this nonsense for a decade and a half:

Prof Roger Pielke, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who focuses on the politicization of science, said that the agency is “reaping the whirlwind” for “cutting corners on science”.

“By not upholding the highest standards of scientific integrity, we’ve opened the door to politicians meddling,” he said.

According to experts, studies and former NOAA officials, the chart proves little about the effects of climate change, and instead shows that disasters are becoming more expensive because Americans choose to build in hazard-prone areas.

“The problem is you can’t use economic data to say anything about climate change,” said Prof Pielke.

Quite right.  Collecting data to forewarn of disaster, then using that data incorrectly and unethically to further a boutique (and flawed) worldview — that would be Global Warming Climate Cooling Change©, of course — deserves censure of the second-highest order.  (“First-order” censure would be imprisonment and so on.)

So of course this little clique of taxpayer-funded climate alarmists deserves to be shut up and disbanded.

MOAR DOGE like this, please.

Augean Stables

Bureaucracy, Trumpism

From Jeff Tucker:

For more than a century, even dating back to 1883, the civil service has grown and grown without check from the elected branch, either the presidency or the legislature . The bureaucracies have ballooned from a few to 450 or so. The bloat and absurdities have grown too. Get this: no one has ever known what to do about it. Not Coolidge, not Hoover, not Nixon, not Reagan, not Clinton, no one. No president has been able to crack this nut.

The only reforms ever to have made it through are those that make the administrative state bigger, never smaller. Countless cabinet secretaries have come and gone, always with the intention of making a change but leaving saddened, demoralized, outwitted, outgunned, and ultimately devoured. No president has seriously taken on this problem because they simply did not know how. The unions are powerful, the intimidation from the deep institutional knowledge is overwhelming, the fear of the media as been powerful, and every single president comes to power vaguely feeling threatened by the intelligence agencies. The industries that have captured every single agency were also far too powerful to unseat or control.

This combination of institutional inertia has blocked serious reform for a full century. No one has dared. No one has even had a theory or strategy about what to do about this problem. It had become so terrible that most people in politics have simply surrendered, like homeowners who know there are rats in the basement and bats in the attic but long ago gave up trying to fix the issue.

All this time, the American people have felt themselves ever more oppressed, weighed upon, taxed and regulated, spied upon, brow beaten, and otherwise overwhelmed. Voting never made any difference because the politicians no longer controlled the system. The bureaucracies ruled all.

But now we have a chance.  It may be our last, because right now, in the paraphrased words of John Adams, we have men worthy of the time:  a president who has a burning desire to make the changes necessary, an associate of towering intellect and inherent power who may be able to execute that change, and the subordinates who are just as willing to make those changes with the necessary authority (in the shape of presidential appointees), and others (the twenty-something hackers and geeks) who have the knowledge, skills and the tools to be able to root out the corruption and deadweight of accumulated bureaucracy and perverted, un-American policy.

More Wastage

Bureaucracy, Trumpism

Boy, the hits they just keep on coming:

All the above make various of my digits itch (and one specifically, guess which one), but the last item in particular makes me want to reach for the Mauser.

Fifty-two million tax dollars to the WEF? Don’t those assholes have enough of their own money?  (Never mind that I find their entire existence as an organization revolting.)

Don’t get me started on the rest, because as it is I feel the need for an extended range session coming on.

Old-Fashioned

Trumpism

For a conservative Olde Phartte such as myself, there is much to recommend in this post in Ye Olde Tyme News, which contains all sorts of wisdom vis-à-vis the current DOGE activities.

I, of course, happen to like his last option very much indeed:

If all else fails, a mass execution of thy nonessential labourers always works.  As they say in lord school, “A dead peasant is an obedient peasant!”  Just be sure to spare enough of them to dispose of the bodies afterwards.

Amen, I say and again “Amen”.

Not Revenge; A Reckoning

Asshole Cops, Government Thugs, Trumpism

That lovely quote from the movie Tombstone  came to mind when I read that Kash Patel was confirmed as FBI Director by the Senate.

I hope, nay even expect that there’s going to be some kind of Mass Resignation Event among the Fibbie senior management — and there fucking well should be.

There has been a lot wrong with the various alphabet agencies who are nominally charged with looking after the American people, in that they seem to have misinterpreted their remit as “looking at” the American people, much in the way that an owl looks at a mouse.

The FBI has proven itself to be particularly at fault because they’ve gone after concerned parents, Catholics and who knows who else in a totally misdirected — and I use the word advisedly — identification of harmless folks like these as “enemies of the nation”.

How they might regard gun owners like myself we will not speak, because the actions of their vaunted SWAT teams speak for themselves.

So Kash, ol’ buddy, get in there and start rooting out the assholes — I’m pretty sure you know who they are — and don’t content yourself with just firing them;  prosecute all those worth prosecuting, just as they have unjustly done to otherwise-innocent people in the past.  (Ask the President how it feels.)

And while you’re there, shut down the stupid departments like Human Rights, not because the motives behind their creation were incorrect, but because the people managing them ended up using those motives as a pretext for harassing and indicting people in the most aggressive and venal manner.

It’s called “turning the tables”, and I can think of no worthier targets than the people who initiated and carried out those actions.  They have, in short, betrayed their public trust and caused the public to fear, loathe and despise them, and they deserve to be severely punished in consequence.

Boo Fucking Hoo

Trumpism

Fact:  she wasn’t an employee of USAID, as represented by 60 Minutes, but an employee of an outside contractor for USAID.  A speechwriter, to be precise.

Yes, and while we’re there, let’s consider the plight of people affected by Biden’s ending of the Keystone pipeline project.  Actual workers, not flunkies working in a tangential industry.

Fuck you.  Fuck all of you.