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Kan du fortelle litt om hva du synes var bra ved forslaget da, og hvorfor du er av den oppfatning av dette var noe GOP generelt ønsket?

Schumer har blitt helt MAGA.

Marco Rubio: ‘I’m the Acting Director of USAID’ “And we owe the American people the assurances that every dollar we are spending abroad is being spent on something that furthers our national interest.” RUBIO: Well, look, I mean, my frustration with USAID goes back to my time in Congress. It’s a completely unresponsive agency. It’s supposed to respond to policy directives of the State Department, and it refuses to do so. And so I’m very troubled by these reports that they’ve been unwilling to cooperate with people who are asking simple questions about what does this program do? Who gets the money? Who are our contractors? Who’s funded? And that sort of level of insubordination makes it impossible to conduct a sort of mature and serious review that I think forne writ large. Joni Ernst fortalte også om problemer og obstruksjoner fra USAID i DOGE podden i går.

Og går man enda lenger tilbake, til Trumps første periode, så fikk også Trump Mexico til å sende tusenvis av soldater til Mexicos sørgrense, i tillegg til tropper til nordgrensen..

Hva med å faktisk svare på noen av de få konkrete spørsmålene jeg stilte?

Det er ikke helt riktig. USAID tildeles en pott i budsjettet som de har til rådighet, kun en del av denne potten brukes på programmer vedtatt av kongressen, resten ligger under utøvende myndighet. Man må ikke bruke opp hele pengesekken kongressen har gitt de til rådighet. Selv kongessen sliter med å få innsyn i USAID.

Graham er ganske standard intel community politiker, og vil nok i ni av ti tilfeller foretrekke det etablerte hvor han vet hva får i stedet for noe nytt og ukjent som bryter med det.

Litt overraskende, Lindsey Graham sier han kommer til å stemme ja til Tulsi Gabbard (dersom hun i hele tatt får en floor vote).

Legacy media not happy.

Trump ødelegger faktisk livet hennes.

Du behøver ikke vente på at byråkrater i EU skal gjøre det, du kan være føre var og gjøre det helt selv. Du kan blokkere en nettside på flere måter, men er kanskje like greit å legge til to linjer i filen som heter "hosts" som ligger i \Windows\System32\drivers\etc\ : 127.0.0.1 x.com 127.0.0.1 pbs.twimg.com

D.C. U.S. attorney fires Jan. 6 prosecutors, launches new probes And he appeared to set his sights on scrutinizing the nation’s top elected Democrat, sending what he called a “letter of inquiry” to Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) about his quickly walked-back statement in a March 2020 rally that two of Trump’s recently nominated Supreme Court justices, Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh, would “pay the price” for a vote against abortion rights. “We take threats against public officials very seriously. I look forward to your cooperation,” Martin wrote Schumer in a Jan. 21 letter obtained by The Post. Hvem skulle tro - kan det få konsekvesener når toppdemokrater kommer med trusler mot Høyesterettsdommere? Noen som forresten vet hvordan det går i denne Arizonasaken der Trump truet å ta livet av Liz Cheney? Blir det tatt tiltale etter endt presidentperiode?

I og med du aldri har kommet med konkret er det vanskelig å vite hvorfor du mener forslaget var bra. Når du ser på hva Trump gjør og har planer om å gjøre, mener du fortsatt at forslaget ville vært bedre, i så fall hvorfor? Hvilke begrensinger ville forslaget lagt på Trump?

DNC skal velge nytt overhode denne helgen. Choosing new leaders, Democrats are still in denial On Thursday night, the candidates gathered at Georgetown University for a final forum. The event was moderated by not one, not two, but three MSNBC hosts. The key issue facing the DNC now is, of course, reforming the party after its defeat in the 2024 elections. Nearly every jurisdiction — states, counties, cities, and suburbs — moved to the right from the 2020 election. The Democratic Party’s losses were across the board. One might think such a drubbing would motivate a party to examine its mistakes and take a hard look in the mirror. But that would not be the DNC way, or the MSNBC way. So, the Georgetown forum was, in significant part, an exercise in denial. Perhaps the key moment came when Capehart asked the candidates and the audience for “a show of hands — how many of you believe that racism and misogyny played a role in Vice President Harris’s defeat?” Everyone onstage and in the audience raised his or her hand. It was unanimous. “OK, so that’s good,” Capehart said. “You all pass.” What the Next DNC Chair Must Do to Save the Party Certainly, pushing back against Trump will be a vital task for the new top team. But that’s not enough. Democrats need leaders who will drive a radical transformation of their party’s character and vision. What’s needed is a Democratic Party where grassroots activists and their allies in labor, environmental, and civil rights organizations sweep the pablum of past messaging aside and replace it with an absolute commitment to economic and social and racial justice that gives frustrated Americans something to vote for. That means that the next DNC chair cannot be simply a competent manager—or, worse yet, a mere fund-raising complement to the party’s plodding congressional leadership. The chair, along with the vice chairs, must lead in a way that ensures that Trump and his minions aren’t the only ones defining our political moment.

Prioriteringer. Enten må borgerne betale mer i skatt eller så må man hente penger ved å kutta andre utgifter. Gjerne en kombo. Forsvar koster.

Hva! Hvordan kan Musk finne seg i dette?!

Ric Grenell tok selv turen til Venezuela og returnerte med 6 amerikanske borgere. US envoy leaves Venezuela with six Americans after meeting Maduro Officials from the Trump administration had said earlier on Friday that one of Grenell's top aims for the visit was to secure the release of Americans detained in the country, at a time when the Trump administration has been driving a deportation and anti-gang push in the United States. Grenell hinted at the trip last week, after the new US president’s inauguration, writing on X: “Donald Trump is President of the United States, again. And diplomacy is back. I’ve spoken to multiple officials in Venezuela today and will begin meetings early tomorrow morning. Talking is a tactic.”

Et litt lengre intervju med little Marco Rubio hos Megyn Kelly hvor han snakker om Colombia, NATO, midt-østen, Ukraina, Grønland, valgkampen i 2015, m.m:

Ble det ikke foreslått tidligere her i tråden at landet der skipet er hjemmehørene også måtte holdes ansvarlig?

Sånt hjelper jo sikkert på underbemanningen.. The FAA allegedly added a question rewarding applicants for doing poorly on test, to get more African American air traffic controller applicants Laxalt said the lawsuit represents nearly 1,000 people who went to school to become air traffic controllers, which, for about 20 years until the end of the Obama administration, graduated 100 % of the people who went on to work in their field. Laxalt reiterated that the class that was thrown out was "too White." As a result, he said, the FAA put together a new test that created a biographical test with the intent of adding more African Americans to the air traffic applicant pool. A 2013 FAA document, “Controller Hiring by the Numbers,” raised the issue in stark terms, asking, “How much of a change in job performance is acceptable to achieve what diversity goals?” Contributing to the shortage, the FAA temporarily put the brakes on hiring in 2012 so it could replace race-blind hiring rules with a “Biographical Assessment” stratagem designed to hire more minorities. This quiz served as further screening of applicants who had already graduated from a 200-hour training program and achieved high scores on AT-SAT, a grueling, eight-hour cognitive test that measures each of the specific skills needed to do the job properly. More than 3,000 top-performing, motivated applicants lost out because they weren’t members of this ethnic club. After Congress forced the FAA to drop the quiz in 2018, many former applicants reapplied and have since become controllers. Their careers were set back several years for no good reason. A trial set for summer 2025 will determine the truth of allegations already found plausible by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The final ruling should be seen as an opportunity to send a message to future administrations that race-based hiring is unacceptable, especially when it sets the stage for disaster.

Harris 2028!

Tusli svarte solid for seg i dag, men som forventet handlet det meste om FISA og Edward Snowden. Intelfolka i kommiteen er veldig besatt på å få henne til å si ordene "Snowden is a traitor", men det kommer uansett ikke til å endre hva de kommer til å stemme. De var nok heller ikke helt fornøyd med svarene og skepsisen hennes rundt FISA, som har tidligere har over 250.000 tilfeller av misbruk. Ikke så veldig mye om Assad og Putin - eller Hezbollah, som hun vistnok også jobber for. Collins virket overraskende nøytral, men er en viss fare for at hun stemmer nei. Todd Young og Cornyn er nok også usikre kort. Usikker på om hun når videre til avstemning i Senatet, mye avhenger nok av Collins. Hos Kash hadde ikke demokratene så veldig mange spørsmål i begynnelsen. Kommet seg litt etterhvert, men ikke mye. Klobuchar var på gråten. Hirono regjererer fortsatt som senatets dummeste. De er veldig opptatt av en sang har bidratt til. Og J6 . Mye repetering. Kash svarer solid, blir nok bekreftet, men kan fort likevel miste 1-3 stemmer i senatet. Thom Tillis laget på forhånd bingokort. Demokratene har levert godt på flere av punktene.

Zzzz.. Unge, lovende Grassley.

The Disruptors: Patel and Gabbard Up Next Gabbard is no hawk when it comes to government secrecy and surveillance powers, so her confirmation is far from in the bag. Heaven forbid that a national intelligence director believes that government snooping should be held in check or that citizens have the right to know what the authorities are doing, supposedly in the name of protecting them. Gabbard advocated for the pardoning of National Security Administration (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden. Patel is no doubt in for a hard slog at his hearing. Democrats have become extremely protective of the FBI ever since Crossfire Hurricane, the ultimately futile counterintelligence operation launched to uncover “collusion” between Russia and the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. Patel makes no secret of the fact that he plans to cleanse the Bureau of suspected anti-Trump (and anti-conservative) ideological bias. Patel does have the backing of more than 50 former FBI agents, who sent a letter to top senators – both Democrats and Republicans – urging them to confirm Trump’s nominee. Among other things, the letter says the FBI is “broken” and that the Bureau “has been used as a tool in the weaponization of the Department of Justice to go after its political enemies.” Kennedy, Gabbard, and Patel – the nomination of these three disruptors is especially egregious to the left. Democrats showed it during the first RFK Jr. hearing, and it’s likely they’ll do the same with the others.

Snart høring med Tusli Gabbard og Kash Patel har nettopp startet. Kash er hardcore MAGA og det var vel nærmest et krav fra magaholikerne at han måtte få en slik eller tilsvarende posisjon. Begger er DC outsidere og bra mislikt. Tulsi kan vente seg samme behandling som både hun og Bernie har fått tidligere, helt i tråd med manuset DNC. Kash Patel: How I’ll Rebuild Public Trust in the FBI The Record Shows Tulsi Gabbard Was Not an Apologist for Russia-Backed Syria