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Ray Jay wrote:

RFK, Jr nominated to ruin our health, Gaetz to wreck our legal system, Gabbard to mess with our national intelligence secrets, Elon & Vivek chosen to wreck our social welfare system.

I fear that Gaetz, Gabbard, and Kennedy will do much harm, but I do believe there is a tremendous amount of waste in government employment. Fun fact, in many cases the first 2 numbers of your social security number indicate the state you were born in, so Vivek is not as smart as he thinks he is. NY is 05, CT is 04, MA is 02.

I'm sure there could be prudent cuts in the number of gvt employees RJ but a random 75% cut in employees is something that you would expect from a freshman year in college bull session, not from someone picked to run a gvt. agency--Vivek is not a serious person.

NY Post Editorial Board, which met with RFK, Jr. in 2023, and is pro Trump came out against his nomination with scathing remarks regarding their meeting:

"But the insights we were impressed with had nothing to do with health.

When it came to that topic his views were a head-scratching spaghetti of what we can only call warped conspiracy theories, and not just on vaccines.

“Neocons” are responsible for America’s policy ills. “Pesticides, cellphones, ultrasound” could be driving an upswing in Tourette syndrome and peanut allergies.

He told us with full conviction that all America’s chronic health problems began in one year in the 1980s when a dozen bad things happened. 

Convincing to the gullible conspiracy-hungry crowd on Twitter, but not to the rest of us. 

In fact, we came out thinking he’s nuts on a lot of fronts."

https://nypost.com/2024/11/14/opinion/p ... -medicine/

freeman3 wrote:

Ray Jay wrote:

RFK, Jr nominated to ruin our health, Gaetz to wreck our legal system, Gabbard to mess with our national intelligence secrets, Elon & Vivek chosen to wreck our social welfare system.

I fear that Gaetz, Gabbard, and Kennedy will do much harm, but I do believe there is a tremendous amount of waste in government employment. Fun fact, in many cases the first 2 numbers of your social security number indicate the state you were born in, so Vivek is not as smart as he thinks he is. NY is 05, CT is 04, MA is 02.

I'm sure there could be prudent cuts in the number of gvt employees RJ but a random 75% cut in employees is something that you would expect from a freshman year in college bull session, not from someone picked to run a gvt. agency--Vivek is not a serious person.

On the subject of government waste, I'm sure that in the next few years we will read about some people who are hurting because of government changes in personel or policy. We may not read about entire divisions of the government that are cut and had absolutely no influence on the world, except writing papers or pushing reports or requesting information that doesn't go anywhere. This happens in the private sector all the time. I'm sure it happens even more in the government based on its structure.

I've only ever worked for small businesses. And if you don't provide value to a small business, you're out. But, yes, from what I understand of large businesses/government there are a lot of people not pulling their weight. But wholesale downsizing is not prudent in my views nor is wholesale cutting of regulations. Organizations need to review their employees and if someone is incompetent after a certain number of chances they need to be fired. The bigger the organization the more difficult it is to keep your company lean and mean, but that's the ideal. I suspect if you told a government agency get rid of your bottom 10% of employees they could manage but draconian cuts, no.

Good info:

https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/2-3-mi ... lead_pos10

Freeman,

What should happen to a vote counting official refuses to count the votes the way the Supreme Court of that state says they should be counted? The reason I am asking you specifically, Freeman, is because of your legal expertise being higher that anyone else on Redscape. What should the punishment for defiance of the law.

This ruling passed by a 5-2 Democratic court says that ballots not prepared properly not be accepted. Bucks, Centre and Philadelphia counties are specifically disregarding the ruling.

I don't know the details of all this. I would need to read the ruling, see the allegations regarding how ballots are being counted, etc. Presumably though if it makes a difference Repubs would be in court, no?

Really important to look at primary sources--in this cas the PennSupreme Court ruling--and the evidence regarding improper counting.

But I can't give an opinion in the abstract. I expect courts will enforce the law but when a matter is actually litigated we get findings of fact and also what the law is and how it applies to the facts at hand

Peter Thiel in a recent video sees the future (apparently in the not too distant future) as ending in Armageddon unless there is the development of an Antichrist--in his mind a one-world state that had real power--and that perhaps there us a narrow path forward between those outcomes or we could delay things a bit...

He and Musk are nuts and apparently think they will have real power/influence in Trump's Admin. They may be deluded that they will have any power, of course.

Thank you for the insight. This came out an hour ago (or so)

In a 4-3 decision, the state Supreme Court reaffirmed its prior decision that counties in the state cannot count incorrectly dated or undated ballots, explicitly singling out Boards of Elections in Bucks County, Montgomery County, and Philadelphia County, whom they said "SHALL COMPLY with the prior rulings of this Court in which we have clarified" for mail-in and absentee ballots in their Nov. 1 ruling.

That is a great deal of chutzpah by the county election boards to go directly against what the courts had already said. (IMHO)

This is the very thing that we were discussing with our neighbors from Quebec today. Is the election result playing towards eschatological beliefs in Revelation? Rather than comparing the Anti-Christ vs Armageddon, one should realize that both are destined to occur. First the Anti-Christ and then Armageddon. We do not know when however. It says in the Bible that:

"But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only" Matthew 24:36

I guess we all need to choose to be ready or not... What that entails is:
Admitting that you are a a sinner (Romans 3:23)
We cannot enter Heaven as a sinner (Rev 21:18)
Jesus is the only way to Heaven (Romans 6:23)
Believe Jesus is Lord, and God raised him from the dead for your sins (Romans 10:9)

Eschatologically speaking, since it was brought up.
(BTW, This was not directed only at Freeman, but I do pray for all of the denizens of Redscape)

If anyone would like to discuss this off Redscape, I would be honored.

****bbauska64@****gmail.com****

Please remove the 12 asterisks!

If you hired a CEO who was as crazy and venal as Trump, you'd expect the company to crater and you'd short its stock. Is the USA, however, more like an ant or bee colony, where the queen doesn't really matter? You gotta have one, but it's not like they're really in charge of most things. It's all the bits and pieces interacting that move things forward. That was kinda how it was like in 2017-2020--with some notable exceptions--the gears of gov't and society moved forward without too much impact from the guy "in charge." This time around seems a little more concerning as the people around him are looking at changing the gears of gov't from the start, but would they really be able to change the hivemind of the society/economy in an appreciable way?

Honest question.

Well, he had competent people for the most part for much of his first term then he started to turn to loyalists at the very end. This time he is starting with unqualified people and those people are also going to fire the cogs that keep the machine going and replace them likely with more unqualified people. He's also selected people who tend to have ideas that are inconsistent with the core purpose of the agency they've been hired to run. I think probably the biggest issue is the firing of long-time agency cogs who keep things running. That's what they've proposed to do. So we'll see.