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Richard's avatar

"without saving any real money:

Worse than that, the IRS estimates that DOGE's firings of IRS auditors could cost $500 billion in lost revenue. It appears the primary losses will be from wealthy tax cheats.

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Whatistobedone's avatar

And even then...grotesque wealth will still use loopholes to evade taxes. Just as Cheeto has carte blanche to do as he pleases, including murdering people he doesn't like (militias are "standing by"), so, too, have the wealthy. But then, they've pretty much always been able to fleece....anyone, anything they want...whenever they want ... welcome to the new middle ages...complete with the king, court jesters, the wet man/woman, the tax cheating accountants... genocide (s l o w death by $$$), ecocide....DEATH in some manner to all us "useless eaters"...(was that Kissinger, a next level dick?). Only a few debt slaves...they need...and millions of robots doing everything we working people (i.e. slaves) once did.

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Robert Atallo's avatar

So far as I can tell, EVERYTHING is being run badly by these morons. Personally, I’m an economist, and I PROMISE you that there’s nobody in the administration who has shown the faintest glimmer of knowledge in this area.

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Planet Marzipan's avatar

I'll never understand why prior to the election there was so much talk about how economists favored a Trump return over Harris. Did they forget everything that went on before Biden took office?

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Robert Atallo's avatar

The republicans have been fielding fake economists for decades. I know of only one MAGA economist with legit credentials (Navarro). I guess he must have some organic brain disease, because if he had to sit for a thesis defense today, they’d bury him under the lecture hall.

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Mike's avatar

Or those who do are very comfortable with this process. They're incompetent, obviously, but at what point can we aay it's intentional? I bet they are getting or are expecting to get paid/rewarded by America's enemies to tear their own country down.

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Johan's avatar

Oh, give me a fucking break. The federal government is a complete shitshow and should absolutely be torn apart, limb by limb. I seriously doubt that you’re a fucking serious economist.

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Ray's avatar

Johan,

Thank you for backing up your conclusions with irrefutable facts (not!) Now put your crayons back in the box, its time for your nap and a diaper change.

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Maurice's avatar

Navarro is a phd economist from harvard tho, right? I know, doesn't seem like it.

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Robert Atallo's avatar

Yes he is. I don’t know what he was like 30 years ago but a lot of economists go nuts in their dotage. I met several when I was in grad school. One even had undiagnosed brain cancer. He was a lot of fun. He was driving his students so crazy that the chairman of the department eventually beat the shit out of him. He was diagnosed about 2 years later

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Whatistobedone's avatar

Gee what a surprise. They are textbook examples of why we NEED DEI....the best for the job...these bozos don't even make it on the chart.

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pmsrw3's avatar

"It makes Hillary Clinton’s email server scandal look Lilliputian by contrast."

Honestly, it always WAS Lilliputian.

I read the Goldberg piece a couple hours ago. It's one of those stories that makes you say, "If this occurred in a novel, I would dismiss it as ridiculous." Not any more! Novelists, do your worst!

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Robert McTague's avatar

Well Dan, OF COURSE you could do better. I'm retired LTC Whogivesafuck, and I have more than twice the military experience of our vaunted SECDEF. Shit, Witkoff says things I could've picked apart when I was a brand new baby FAO traveling to Moscow in 2001 for some security briefings.

The DOGE stuff is intentional and is a win-win for MAGA. How do you prove "the government" is useless, corrupt and needs to be destroyed (so the country can be run by the oligarchs the GOP has been prepping since 1964)? You semi-destroy it, by hobbling three legs of the horse (after feeding it poison). Then you exhort your crowd of feverishly devoted freakazoids to tear the rest down--preferably in a sea of violence.

Yes folks, violence WILL be in the recipe. Summer at latest. If you think I'm overreacting, you're already behind.

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Marcia Diederich's avatar

There are smarter cabinets at IKEA.

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SwainPDX's avatar

Top notch work. This comment deserved more, Marcia. I plan to use it later today…

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James's avatar

I’m in MMO gaming guilds with better opsec.

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LouisBDL's avatar

You forgot to mention that he is threatening to launch a war of aggression against Denmark for no reason, and that he has effectively ruined the credibility of NATO. These are not insignificant.

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Robert Gillette's avatar

On balance, Trump’s attempted, and so far largely successful evisceration of every instrument of American soft-power promotion of democracy— USAID, National Endowment for Democracy, the Institute of Peace, Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty (the most effective broadcaster to Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the rest of the former Soviet Union), even the Wilson Center think tank— all benefits Russia much more than China. Moscow is delirious.

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Mike's avatar

I hear you can't find a bottle of bubbly for sale within 100 miles of red square.

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Robert Gillette's avatar

Hopefully at least the flavor has improved from the bubble-gum like stuff of Soviet times.

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Ziggy's avatar

I believe that bubble-gum bubbly comports with Russian taste, not Soviet diktat. The French sold the sweet stuff to Russia back in the days of the Czar.

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J.’Celebration Of Idiocy’'s avatar

Who’s to say that within the vanity portrait Putin gifted to *rump that there was not painted within it a listening device?

Today’s Signal idiocracy of communication aside (from our own government), Putin was KGB and knows how to utilize and/or install multitude of minuscule listening devices. 😳🤔💪🏻✌🏼

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Mike's avatar

Even if there was, you think Trump cares if his owner is listening in?

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mike harper's avatar

I read that a gift to the Moscow embassy had device in it. Back in the Cold War days.

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Sabine Nolke's avatar

I bet they haven’t even swept that “gracious” portrait for bugs, and it will be hung right in the Oval Office so Putin can have a good giggle at the level of “policy discourse” that happens there.

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HP's avatar

The Signal conversation also reveals the pathological hatred the American Medvedev and his merry band of little extortionists have for Europe. The intention to “extract” money from us has not passed by unnoticed either. Good. It helps Europeans accept the reality that the US is now an enemy power.

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Hari Prasad's avatar

All true. But why would a demented and incoherent ignoramus with a serious personality disorder be able to run the foreign policy of the United States? Trump never showed he was fit for any public office or even to be outside a jail in his long life as a cheat, social, financial, and sexual predator. Everyone knows he laps up the crudest flattery and is easily bribed and manipulated. Stephen Miller and Witcoff and Hegseth were never going to be the George Marshalls or Henry Kissingers of today. American politics has degenerated to the lowest level anyone could imagine and keeps falling. Maniacs, fools, and robbers are the choice and master spirits of the age, in Shakespeare's phrase. "A dog's obeyed in office" as the despairing Lear commented.

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David Kiene's avatar

Man oh man. Reading this was really painful.

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Alan Neff's avatar

Inmates, asylum. Rinse, repeat. Incompetence, corruption. Rinse, repeat.

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Geoff G's avatar

It's kind of a shame they didn't ask Goldberg for his thoughts. He's got better judgment, and much more background knowledge, than anyone else in the chat. (Which, not to disparage JG in the least, isn't necessarily saying much.)

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Richard Donnelly's avatar

Goldberg was mistakenly texted top secret info, a stunning security breach. Did he immediately alert the texters? Should this breech have been vetted through our security channels before given to the public? There's some unanswered questions here.

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KMB's avatar

Poor babies. They can’t remember, they don’t know, they can’t remember and they don’t want to discuss it. Lies lies lies. We are in the hands of morons, idiotic morons.

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