It must be really difficult for Trump to keep finding ways to one-up his previous stupid statements to divert our attention from his ongoing crimes.

#3 | Posted by censored

Never under estimate the power of stupidity. Stupidity knows no limits. And remember a wise man once said many times "You can't fix stupid."

#2 | Posted by Gal_Tuesday

Shared that with my Arab friends and acquaintances that voted Trump and GOP because Biden and the Dems were "so bad" because they didn't do more to stop Gaza. Crickets. Of course I did tell them "This is just the beginning. Remember this is what you voted for."

I forgot to add the GOP has actually voted to cut/eliminate farm subsidies as well. The Democrats protected those subsidies.

Look, the GOP has been talking about cutting farm subsidies for a while - at least the first Trump term. The thing is that it is the only feasible way to keep farms out of the red and production of food in the US without bankrupting all the non-mega farms out there. Even the mega farms would be challenged to stay in business. If these dumb ******* want to keep voting for the GOP they get what they deserve. They are against things like welfare and medicaid yet eagerly take their own handouts. Why? I have yet to hear a good reason.

Something on Automation. I believe it is 100% needed but it is NOT inexpensive and still requires people. In fact it requires people that are not your average factory workers today. You have to outlay a massive amount of money to build the machinery and it requires years of time and THEN you have maintain it. I know lot about manufacturing and automation. One of the things I am involved with is automation. Americans are not great workers by and large. The farther right they are, the more useless they seem to be IMHO. Not to mention loud, obnoxious and entitled.

The average machine where I presently work is now over $500k. Most are like $750k. These are basically standard off the shelf machines in the industry. Annual maintenance on them is in the order of $150-200k. Then you have to have operators to run them. An operator can be trained to setup and run them competently in 3-4 years. And the top manufacturers are in Germany, Switzerland, Czechia and Australia. There is one American maker and they are sub par. All the parts are made overseas as well. The other thing is the average person who is learning to run these machines is NOT well paid and I have to say about half of them shouldn't be running them but you work with what you can get.

Another example, a long time ago I worked at a Tech startup funded by the owner of a US machine maker. I actually helped them out from time to time. They made custom automated manufacturing solutions primarily for Automotive. The average machine they worked on at the time was about $10 million and they had to layout the cash to build these machines until paid by the customer. The build time was typically 3-5 years. The company had messed up on a machine that delivery was refused on and lost in court basically because of owner arrogance which was a blow. About a year later they were put out of Business by Delphi who refused to accept and pay for a machine that machined brake rotors. That machine today would probably run $35-40 million but back then was $12 million. The problem they claimed is it didn't meet the specification even though they had several check points along the way. The sad thing is that machine was built to the spec but the Delphi engineer building the spec messed up and the product was not to spec. But a small company that had fronted millions already couldn't take on a billion dollar company in court. Sadly I work with the putz that messed up that spec.

I could go on and on.

Just when you thought he couldn't find a worse pick than DeVoss

#12 | Posted by fortfisher

WT...?

Echos of MS St. Louis.

She is spot on and we are clearly in that spiral at the moment.

Holy ----. That is all I can say.

Zelensky was absolutely correct. I guarantee he did not know this was coming. Why should he sit there and listen to dumb and dumber. Sad thing is, I am not sure which one is actually dumber. Premeditated 2 on 1 because they know Trump can't manage a single sensible sentence or stay on message. Dementia Donnie working hard at it.

Follow that up with all the Republiturds cheering it on. I am actually ashamed to be an American today.

The US Economic Policy Uncertainty Index is at its highest level since 2000, higher than during the Financial Crisis, higher than during COVID

bsky.app

#5 | Posted by reinheitsgebot

THIS. Companies are all going into recession or even depression plans. Cuts and layoffs everywhere. I have said it before my company is a manufacturing bell weather. When our orders drop we know planned production is slated to decrease or even cease. Uncertainty destroys economies and businesses learned a lot about upheaval events in the past 25 years. This is both unnecessary and unpredictable upheaval. I personally believe it is the plan to destroy this country.

Instead of using the system to help hunt down criminals and defend democracies, Elon would prefer to prop up dictators and let criminals run amuck.

Another one? These radical Geebus humpers are some sickos.

Dementia Donny is SOOOO accurate.

So break this down for me.

Ukraine is giving something, I assume they get what in return? And is Ukraine simply giving up the land lost in the war?

And what's Putin's play in all this? Sure he got some territory but he'll be happy with the deal US/Ukraine made and walk away for the time being?

#38 | Posted by brass30

So the EU has stepped in with their own, more favorable to Ukraine, proposal...

Waiting for this to be released. lol

I am sure they will disappear in an accidental data deletion and any evidence will burn up in an mysterious evidence lock up fire right after.

#17 | Posted by truthhurts

Precisely. Cutting too many or just the wrong people leads to higher costs.

#15 | Posted by Zed

I suppose that is quite possible (employer of last resort) but anecdotally I know a few working for the VA today and I personally don't know of any with struggles in that area. They are just one of the better employers that WERE considered to be stable if not cushy jobs (living wage pay, good healthcare, pension & 401k retirement, reasonable raises, no crazy expectations, etc). My grandfather's brother worked at the local VA hospital after WWII until he retired. He definitely had PTSD though - wounded twice in two separate incidents on Iwo Jima.

I even know a couple non-vets working there. One of the non-vets is honestly pretty fed up with the team not being gung-ho and essentially there to the job assigned to them while she is young, really ambitious and working with people mostly twice her age and doesn't get where they are at. They aren't out to be managers and directors - just making their way through life.

#2 | Posted by LampLighter

Honestly looking at the list of who the largest BP shareholders it seems that 401k and other Retirement funds are among the leaders.

The Vanguard Group, Inc. 4.841 %
BlackRock Investment Management (UK) Ltd. 3.695 %
Norges Bank Investment Management 3.524 %
BlackRock Fund Advisors 3.022 %
Clearstream Banking SA 1.761 %

Definitely one of my favorite actors of all time. A distinctive one too. RIP.

#2 | Posted by LampLighter

^ This. ^

Save money? These firings will end up costing FAR more. Especially with Unions involved. I mean they already are costing us I am sure in inefficiencies and vacancies in jobs needed to make things happen.

Note: I am not saying that trimming employee headcount in the government is necessarily bad. What is bad is the vindictive, haphazard and false accusations coming with these firings. There is no plan, rhyme or reason for what they are doing.

Anyone else notice how hapless and witless Fishpaw is? Can't even manage a cohesive fact based rebuttal or comment.

#33 | Posted by Effeteposer

Well ya, the Russian assets in Washington have been saying we shouldn't support them for a lot longer than 2 years and they are all on the GOP side of the aisle. The Russian propaganda machine has been hard at work convincing righties Russia is right. Truth Social, Xitter, etc are complicit as well. There was evidence of that for more than 2 years too. Then Trump gets re-elected. Even before that the standoff on aid included Trump.

As for being bamboozled, I dare so no. They seen what the West offers and about 70% of them want it.