In 2024 We Saw A Lot More Concessions And Price Cuts

1. ‘It’s way too much, you have your property tax increasing; you have your insurance increasing, so everything is increasing, you cannot afford to put food on the table’

   There’s yer problem right there Louis.

   1. You will eat nothing.

   2. He’s a local artist that lives in Lantana and said he was paying $5,500 annually for Citizens insurance. ‘It’s way too much, you have your property tax increasing; you have your insurance increasing, so everything is increasing, you cannot afford to put food on the table,’ said Louis Ductan. He said he couldn’t afford his $6,000 Citizens premium and decided to drop homeowners insurance coverage all together.”

      Lantana is just a stone’s throw from the Atlantic Ocean on an inland waterway. What premium would Julio expect some else to pay if he had the liability for coverage with a large hurricane coming ashore!
      It doesn’t happen often, but when it does I think Julio may wish he had at least some insurance. But Julio secretly believes that if he loses his house to a big storm then FEMA or someone else will make him whole. I am a native Floridian. Move away from the coast!

      1. couldn’t afford his $6,000 Citizens premium and decided to drop homeowners insurance coverage all together.

         But notice the BIG truck suvs and the big monthly car payment……(channeling dave ramsey)

2. ‘Bay County’s continuing development is creating conflicting outcomes for sellers. CPAR officials say resale homes are struggling to compete. ‘We’ve seen a big influx of new development, a lot of new builds, which is great for buyers because new builders can offer concessions and discounted points that the regular seller may not be able to offer’

   Shack builders will bury the existing market until they go bust Ariane.

3. The Most Dramatic Narrative Shift in Modern History.

   https://brownstone.org/articles/the-most-dramatic-narrative-shift-in-modern-history/

   The Brownstone Institute – The most dramatic narrative shift in this post-lockdown period has been the flip in the perceptions of government itself. For decades and even centuries, government was seen as the essential bulwark to defend the poor, empower the marginalized, realize justice, even the playing field in commerce, and guarantee rights to all.

   Government was the wise manager, curbing the excess of populist enthusiasm, blunting the impact of ferocious market dynamics, guaranteeing the safety of products, breaking up dangerous pockets of wealth accumulation, and protecting the rights of minority populations. That was the ethos and the perception.

   Taxation itself was sold to the population for centuries as the price we pay for civilization, a slogan emblazoned in marble at the DC headquarters of the IRS and attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who said this in 1904, ten years before the federal income tax was even legal in the US.

   This claim was not just about a method of funding; it was a commentary on the perceived merit of the whole of the public sector.

   Yes, this view had challengers on the right and left but their radical critiques rarely took hold of the public mind in a sustained way.

   A strange thing happened in 2020.

   Most governments at all levels across the globe turned on their people. It was a shock because governments had never before attempted anything this audacious. It claimed to be exercising mastery over the whole of the microbial kingdom, the world over. It would prove this implausible mission as a valid one with the release of a magic potion made and distributed with its industrial partners who were fully indemnified against liability claims.

   Suffice it to say that the potion did not work. Everyone got Covid anyway. Most everyone shook it off. Those who died were often denied common therapeutics to make way for a shot that clocked the highest rate of injury and death on public record. A worse fiasco would be hard to invent outside dystopian fiction.

   Participating in this grand crusade were all the commanding heights. That included mass media, academia, the medical industry, the information systems, and science itself. After all, the very notion of “public health” itself implies a “whole of government” and a “whole of society” effort. Indeed, science – with its high status earned from many centuries of achievement – led the way.

   The politicians – the people for whom the public votes and who form the one real connection that the people have with the regimes under which they live – went along but did not seem to be in the driver’s seat. Nor did the courts seem to have much role. They were closed along with small businesses, schools, and houses of worship.

   The controlling forces in every nation traced to something else we did not normally think of as government. It was the administrators who occupied agencies that were deemed independent of public awareness or control. They worked closely with their industrial partners in tech, pharma, banking, and corporate life.

   The Constitution did not matter. Neither did the long tradition of rights, liberty, and law. The workforce was divided between essential and nonessential in order to survive the great emergency. The essential people were the ruling class plus the workers who serve them. Everyone else was deemed unessential to social functioning.

   It was supposed to be for our health – government merely looking after us – but this claim lost credibility quickly, as mental and physical health plummeted. Desperate loneliness replaced community. Loved ones were forcibly separated. The aged died alone with digital funerals. Weddings and worship were cancelled. Gyms were closed and then opened later only for the masked and the vaxxed. The arts died. Substance abuse skyrocketed because while everything else was closed the liquor stores and pot shops were open for business.

   Here was when perceptions dramatically changed. Government was not what we thought. It is something else. It does not serve the public. It serves its own interests. Those interests are deeply woven into the fabric of industry and civil society. The agencies are captured. The largesse flows mainly to the well-connected.

   The bills are paid by the people who had been deemed nonessential and who were now being compensated for the troubles with direct payments that were created by a printing press. Within a year, this showed up in the form of inflation that dramatically reduced real income during an economic crisis.

   This huge experiment in pharmacological planning ended up flipping the rubrical narrative that had largely covered public affairs for everyone’s lifetimes. The terrible reality was being broadcast to the whole population in ways no one had ever before experienced. Centuries of philosophy and rhetoric were being shredded before our eyes, as whole populations came face-to-face with the unthinkable: government had become a grand scam or even criminal enterprise, a machinery that served only elite plans and elite institutions.

   As it turns out, generations of ideological philosophizing had been chasing fictional rabbits. This is true for all the main debates about socialism and capitalism but also the side debates about religion, demographics, climate change, and so much more. Nearly everyone had been distracted from seeing the things that matter by hunting for things that did not actually matter.

   This realization transversed typical partisan and ideological boundaries. Those who did not like to think about issues of class conflict had to face the ways in which the whole system was serving one class at the expense of everyone else. The cheerleaders of government beneficence faced the unthinkable: their true love had become malevolent. The champions of private enterprise had to deal with the ways in which private corporations participated and benefited from the entire fiasco. All major political parties and their journalistic backers participated.

   No one’s ideological priors were confirmed in the course of events, and everyone was forced to realize that the world worked in a very different way from what we had been told. Most governments in the world had come to be controlled by people no one elected and these administrative forces were loyal not to voters but to industrial interests in media and pharma, while the intellectuals we had long trusted to say what is true went along with even the craziest of claims, while condemning dissent.

   Making matters more confusing, no one in charge of this disaster would admit error or even explain their thinking. The burning questions were and are so voluminous as to be impossible to list in full. In the US, there was supposed to be a Covid commission but it never formed. Why? Because the critics far outweighed the apologists, and a public commission proved too risky.

   Too much truth could get out, and then what would happen? Behind the public health rationale for the destruction, there was a hidden hand: national security interests rooted in the bioweapons industry that has long lived under a classified cover. This is likely what accounts for the strange taboo concerning this whole topic. Those who know cannot say while the rest of us who have been researching this for years are left with more questions than answers.

   While we wait for a full accounting of how it is that rights and liberties were crushed worldwide – what Javier Milei has called a “crime against humanity” – there is no denying the reality on the ground. There was certain to be a blowback, the ferocity of which would only intensify the longer justice is delayed.

   For several years, the world had awaited the political, economic, cultural, and intellectual fallout, while the perpetrators held on hoping that the whole subject would just go away. Forget about Covid, they kept saying to us, and yet the sheer size and scale of the calamity would not go away.

   We live in the midst of that now, with minute-by-minute revelations of where the money went and who precisely was involved. Multiple trillions were squandered as the people’s standard of living took a dive, and now top among the burning questions is: who got the money? Careers are being wrecked as famous anti-corporate crusaders like Bernie Sanders turn out to be the US Senate’s largest single beneficiary of pharma largesse, exposed for the world.

   The Sanders story is just one data point of millions. The news of the sheer number of rackets is spilling out like an avalanche minute-by-minute. The newspapers we thought were chronicling public life turned out to be on the take. The fact-checkers were always working for the blob. The censors were only protecting themselves. The inspectors we believed were keeping an eye out were always in on the game. The courts keeping tabs on government overreach were enabling it. The bureaucracies tagged to implement legislation were unchecked and unelected legislatures in themselves.

   The shift is beautifully illustrated by USAID, a $50 billion agency that claimed to be doing humanitarian work but which was really a slush fund for regime change, deep-state operations, censorship, and NGO graft on a scale never before seen. Now we have the receipts. The entire agency, lording over the globe like an unchecked colossus for decades, seems destined for the trash heap.

   And so on it goes.

   Frequently overlooked in all the commentary on our times is how the second Trump administration is Republican in name only but mostly consists of refugees from the other party. Tick through the names (Trump, Vance, Musk, Kennedy, Gabbard, and so on) and you find people who only a few years ago were associated with the Democratic Party.

   Which is to say that this aggressive rooting out of the deep state is being achieved by what is a de facto third party aimed at overthrowing the establishments of the legacy ones. And this is not just in the US: the same dynamic is taking shape throughout the industrialized world.

   The entire system of government – properly conceived of not as a democratically elected conduit of the peoples’ interest but instead a complicated and unelected network of unfathomable industrial racketeering with a ruling class at the controls – seems to be unraveling before our eyes.

   It’s like the old episodes of Scooby-Doo when the scary ghost or mysterious specter has the mask removed and it is the town mayor all along, who then proclaims that he would have gotten away with it but for these meddling kids.

   The meddling kids now include vast swaths of the world’s population, burning with a passionate desire to clean up the public sector, expose the industrial scams, unearth all the secrets that have been kept for decades, put power back into the hands of the people as the liberal age promised long ago, while seeking justice for all the wrongdoing of these last hellish five years.

   The Covid operation was an audacious global attempt to deploy all the power of government – in all the directions from and to which it flowed – in service of a goal never before attempted in history. To say that it failed is the understatement of the century. What it did was unleash fires of fury the world over, and whole legacy systems are in the process of burning down.

   How deep is the corruption? There are no words to describe its breadth and depth.

   Who is regretting this? It’s the legacy news media, the legacy academic establishment, the legacy corporate establishment, the legacy public-sector agencies, the legacy everything, and this regret knows no partisan or ideological bounds.

   And who is celebrating this or, at least, enjoying the upheaval and cheering it on? It’s the independent media, the genuine grassroots, the deplorables and nonessentials, the pillaged and oppressed, the workers and peasants who were forced to serve the elites for years, those who have been truly marginalized through decades of exclusion from public life.

   No one can be sure where this ends up – and no revolution or counterrevolution in history is without cost or complication – but this much is true: public life will never be the same for generations to come.

   1. This post is 37 paragraphs long.

      1. It’s a doozy. It’s all about skimming.

      2. And every one of them is worth reading.

         1. Our blog host, of which we are all guests here, will decide that.

   2. And don’t forget that our benevolent first world governments decided that we all needed to be replaced by third worlders.

   3. Excellent summary of events.

4. “If she hadn’t been able to get the money the government had promised, ‘I would have had a $3 million loan with a really scary repayment option’

   The reason we’ve had an explosion in bums is the guberment is paying for it to explode. And they let the drugs in at the same time. The court system did everything they could to keep anyone from stopping it. No bank would have loaned Lila ten pesos for bum housing.

5. OVERRIDE:

   INSIDE THE REVOLUTION REWIRING AMERICAN POWER.

   https://eko.substack.com/p/override?utm_campaign=post

   The clock struck 2 AM on Jan 21, 2025.

   In Treasury’s basement, fluorescent lights hummed above four young coders. Their screens cast blue light across government-issue desks, illuminating energy drink cans and agency badges. As their algorithms crawled through decades of payment data, one number kept growing: $17 billion in redundant programs. And counting.

   “We’re in,” Akash Bobba messaged the team. “All of it.”

   Edward Coristine’s code had already mapped three subsystems. Luke Farritor’s algorithms were tracing payment flows across agencies. Ethan Shaotran’s analysis revealed patterns that career officials didn’t even know existed. By dawn, they would understand more about Treasury’s operations than people who had worked there for decades.

   This wasn’t a hack. This wasn’t a breach. This was authorized disruption.

   While career bureaucrats prepared orientation packets and welcome memos, DOGE’s team was already deep inside the payment systems. No committees. No approvals. No red tape. Just four coders with unprecedented access and algorithms ready to run.

   “The beautiful thing about payment systems,” noted a transition official watching their screens, “is that they don’t lie. You can spin policy all day long, but money leaves a trail.”

   That trail led to staggering discoveries. Programs marked as independent revealed coordinated funding streams. Grants labeled as humanitarian aid showed curious detours through complex networks. Black budgets once shrouded in secrecy began to unravel under algorithmic scrutiny.

   By 6 AM, Treasury’s career officials began arriving for work. They found systems they thought impenetrable already mapped. Networks they believed hidden already exposed. Power structures built over decades revealed in hours.

   Their traditional defenses—slow-walking decisions, leaking damaging stories, stonewalling requests—proved useless against an opponent moving faster than their systems could react. By the time they drafted their first memo objecting to this breach, three more systems had already been mapped.

   “Pull this thread,” a senior official warned, watching patterns emerge across DOGE’s screens, “and the whole sweater unravels.”

   He wasn’t wrong. But he misunderstood something crucial: That was exactly the point.

   This wasn’t just another transition. This wasn’t just another reform effort. This was the start of something unprecedented: a revolution powered by preparation, presidential will, and technological precision.

   The storm had arrived. And Treasury was just the beginning.

   THE FOUNDATION
   “Personnel is policy.”

   For decades, this principle, articulated by conservative strategist Troup Hemenway, remained more theory than practice. Previous administrations spent months, even years, trying to staff key positions. Trump’s first term saw barely 100 political appointees confirmed by February 2017.

   Every delay meant another victory for the permanent bureaucracy.

   But this time was different.

   While media focused on campaign rallies and political theater, a quiet army was being assembled. In offices across DC, veteran strategists mapped the administrative state’s pressure points. Think tanks developed action plans for every agency. Policy institutes trained rapid deployment teams. Former appointees shared battlefield intelligence from previous administrations’ failures.

   By Inauguration Day, over 1,000 pre-vetted personnel stood ready—each armed with clear objectives, mapped legal authorities, and direct lines to support networks. This wasn’t just staffing; it was a battle plan decades in the making.

   “This is the new normal,” Vice President JD Vance declared from his West Wing office, studying real-time data flows across agency systems. “He’s having the time of his life,” he added, referring to the President’s relentless drive. “We’ve done more in two weeks than others did in years.”

   The secret wasn’t just speed—it was precision. Instead of waiting for Senate confirmations, the transition team prioritized non-Senate-confirmed positions. While Democrats prepared for traditional confirmation battles over cabinet posts, an army of aligned personnel was already moving into place. Strategic positions were identified. Legal authorities were mapped. Support networks were established.

   “We don’t have a lot of time,” the President reminded his team daily. “Four years is a lot of time in political life but it’s not a long time in real life.”

   This urgency drove innovation. When DOGE’s young coders breached Treasury’s payment systems, pre-positioned legal teams neutralized resistance within hours. When career officials tried revoking system access, they discovered DOGE’s authority came from levels they couldn’t challenge. When leaks surfaced, rapid-response units fed counter-narratives to alternative media almost instantly.

   “When you look at the people surrounding the president,” Vance noted, “we’re trying to make it sort of easy for him to do what he wants to do in government. When you have the entire team firing on all cylinders you can get a lot done.”

   The permanent bureaucracy never saw it coming. They were prepared for resistance. They were ready for protests. They had plans for leaks and legal challenges. But they had no defense against an opponent who had spent years preparing for this moment.

   This wasn’t just about filling seats—it was about building a machine designed to transform American governance. Every position mattered. Every appointment carried weight. And behind it all stood a president counting down not years or months, but weeks and days, driving his team forward with relentless energy.

   The foundation was set. And the revolution was just beginning.

   THE SPREAD

   USAID fell next. No midnight raids this time. No secret algorithms. Just a simple memo on agency letterhead: “Pursuant to Executive Authority…”

   Career officials panicked—and for good reason. Created by Executive Order in 1961, USAID could be dissolved with a single presidential signature. No congressional approval needed. No court challenges possible. Just one pen stroke, and six decades of carefully constructed financial networks would face sunlight.

   “Pull this thread,” a senior official warned, watching DOGE’s algorithms crawl through USAID’s databases, “and a lot of sweaters start unraveling.”

   The resistance was immediate—and telling. Career officials who had barely blinked at Treasury’s exposure now worked through weekends to block DOGE’s access. Democratic senators who had ignored other moves suddenly demanded emergency hearings. Former USAID officials flooded media outlets with warnings about “institutional knowledge loss” and “diplomatic catastrophe.”

   But their traditional defenses crumbled against DOGE’s new playbook. While bureaucrats drafted memos about “proper procedures,” the young coders were already mapping payment flows. While senators scheduled hearings, pre-positioned personnel were implementing new transparency protocols. While media allies prepared hit pieces, DOGE’s algorithms exposed decades of questionable transactions.

   The scale was breathtaking:

   EPA climate initiatives? Not just mapped—found unauthorized programs in 47 states. Education’s DEI maze? Not just exposed—revealed coordination across 1,200 programs. Intelligence community black budgets? Not just traced—uncovered patterns hidden for 30 years.

   “The administrative state runs on two things,” a senior advisor explained, watching patterns emerge across DOGE’s screens. “Control of information and money flows.” His eyes tracked new connections forming in real-time. “We’re not just exposing their networks—we’re rewriting their DNA.”

   The cracks began showing in unexpected places. A career EPA director, tears streaming: “Everything we built…” A USAID veteran, hands shaking: “They’re inside all of it…” A Treasury lifer, closing his office: “They move faster than we can think.”

   Across Washington, officials who had weathered every reform since Reagan began quietly updating LinkedIn profiles. A Deputy Director: “Open to opportunities.” An Agency Chief: “Exploring new challenges.” A Bureau Head: “Time for change.”

   DOGE’s algorithms weren’t just programs—they were archaeology tools, excavating decades of buried networks. Each data point connected to another. Each discovery revealed new targets. Each pattern exposed larger systems.

   “It’s beautiful,” one of the coders whispered, watching connections form across his screen. “Like watching a galaxy map itself.”

   For the permanent bureaucracy, this wasn’t just change. It was an extinction-level event. Their power came from controlling who got paid, when they got paid, and what they got paid for. Now those controls were evaporating like dawn burning away darkness.

   The pattern was devastating in its simplicity:

   Map the money flows

   Deploy aligned personnel

   Expose the networks

   Restructure the systems

   By the time bureaucrats drafted objections to one breach, three more had already occurred.

   The revolution wasn’t just spreading. It was accelerating.

   THE IMPACT

   The first bulldozer arrived in Springfield, Ohio at 6 AM on a Tuesday. By noon, three blocks of notorious potholes were filled. Local news crews arrived to find not just construction crews, but data analysts with laptops, mapping every dollar spent against real-time progress.

   This wasn’t just road repair. This was revolution in action.

   A woman grabbed the analyst’s arm, tears in her eyes. “Twelve years,” she whispered. “Twelve years I’ve been calling about these potholes.” He turned his laptop, showing real-time data flows. “Look,” he said. “Your tax dollars. Actually working.”

   She stared at the screen. “My God,” she whispered. “It’s really happening.”

   Across America, funds once lost in administrative mazes suddenly found their way to actual problems needing solutions. In rural Tennessee, broadband expansion projects long buried under bureaucratic red tape broke ground overnight. In Michigan, water treatment plants received upgrades that bureaucrats had studied for decades but never approved.

   The transformation was measurable. In just two weeks:

   Tens of thousands of redundant programs identified

   Billions in waste exposed

   Hundreds of unauthorized initiatives halted

   Countless local projects unleashed

   But the real metric? Trust in government rising for the first time in 50 years.

   The revolution spread with surgical precision:

   Real-time tracking replaced quarterly reports

   Algorithmic oversight replaced review boards

   Local solutions replaced federal mandates

   Results replaced process

   “He’s done more in two weeks than Biden did in four years and Obama did in eight,” Vance noted from his West Wing office. “But this isn’t just about speed. This isn’t just about tech. This isn’t just about personnel. It’s all three, perfectly aligned.”

   For ordinary Americans, the impact was undeniable. Roads repaired. Schools revitalized. Water purified. But more importantly, something else was being restored: trust.

   For the first time in generations, people saw their government not as an obstacle but as a tool for positive change.

   The permanent bureaucracy had long operated on a simple assumption: presidents come and go, but they remain. That assumption now lay shattered, replaced by a new reality: when preparation meets presidential determination, nothing is permanent.

   “They thought we’d slow down,” Vance said, studying real-time data flows across agencies. “They thought we’d get bogged down in process. They thought we’d play by their rules.”

   He smiled. “Instead, we’re just getting started.”

   THE NEW DAWN

   The sun rises early in Washington. On this morning, its first rays caught the classical columns of the Treasury building, casting long shadows across streets still quiet. But inside, beneath the marble and granite, screens still glowed blue. DOGE’s algorithms never sleep.

   “The administrative state was built over decades,” a senior advisor explained, watching new patterns emerge across the displays. “Built to resist change. Built to outlast presidents. Built to preserve power.”

   He paused, tracking a particularly interesting data flow. “But they never imagined this. They built walls against political attacks. Defenses against media exposure. Shields against congressional oversight.”

   “They never prepared for algorithms that could map everything. For personnel pre-positioned everywhere. For a president who counts every week like it’s his last.”

   The numbers tell the story: In Treasury – networks mapped, waste exposed, systems rewired At USAID – decades of hidden flows revealed, power structures dismantled Across agencies – redundancies eliminated, authorities realigned, missions refocused

   But numbers aren’t the whole story.

   Imagine, changes, coming to a community near you:

   Springfield, Ohio, potholes that plagued residents for twelve years actually disappeared overnight. Rural Tennessee, where children can finally connect to high-speed internet their parents were promised decades ago. In Michigan, people truly drink clean water while bureaucrats’ memos about “studying the problem” gather dust.

   This isn’t just reform. This isn’t just change. This is American governance reimagined.

   “The pace is going to be the same,” Vice President Vance declared this week. “It’s just the priorities that are going to change.”

   The permanent bureaucracy built their administrative state over decades, brick by bureaucratic brick. They thought it would last forever. They thought it was too big to map, too complex to understand, too entrenched to change.

   They were wrong.

   Four young coders with laptops proved that. One thousand pre-positioned personnel proved that. A president counting weeks proved that.

   The sun continues rising over Washington. Classical columns still cast their shadows. But inside those buildings, everything has changed. The administrative state finally met its match: preparation plus presidential will plus technological precision.

   This isn’t the end of the story. This is just the beginning.

   The revolution isn’t just continuing. It’s becoming the new normal.

   And for those who thought the D E E P S T A T E would rule forever?

   They’re about to learn what happens when smart strategic minds meet determination. When preparation meets opportunity. When a new generation decides it’s time for change.

   The storm isn’t just gathering. It’s here to stay.

   The sun continues rising over Washington. But now, for the first time in generations, it illuminates something new:

   A government that works.

   A bureaucracy that serves.

   A system that delivers.

   The revolution isn’t just beginning.

   It’s already won.

   1. Wow! A mini-book no less.

   2. “The permanent bureaucracy had long operated on a simple assumption: presidents come and go, but they remain.”

      I hope these parasites are identified, where they worship, etc.

6. DOGE’s First Round of Cuts Went to Trump Priorities, but Bigger Targets Await.

   After defunding DEI and climate-change programs, Musk’s team mobilizes a giant review of government real estate.

   https://archive.ph/EL2Zp

   The WSJ, WASHINGTON — The White House’s Department of Government Efficiency has drawn scrutiny for the rapid work of its technology team burrowing into multiple agencies, but it also says it has identified and cut more than $1 billion in spending in the first three weeks.

   That is a mere fraction of the $2 trillion in spending cuts that Elon Musk, DOGE’s public face, has set as a goal, but it shows how the entity has begun going program-by-program across multiple federal agencies and paring back what it considers low-hanging fruit. The initial actions it has taken, identifying relatively small-dollar programs, could soon change markedly as DOGE team members are now embedding in some of the government’s largest programs, particularly those focused on healthcare.

   Musk’s team is also working with the General Services Administration, which manages government buildings and commercial real estate, to identify which leases can be canceled or let lapse, looking for underused office space and ways to consolidate.

   More than half of the cost savings that DOGE says it has found is related to diversity, equity and inclusion, totaling more than $1 billion, according to a review of the group’s posts on X, where it publishes its results. Since taking office, President Trump has ordered federal agencies to terminate diversity programs and contracts, which reflects his desire to put the culture wars at the center of his presidency.

   DOGE said it also terminated about $30 million in contracts for digital modernization projects and at least $4 million in leases for little-used office space.
   DOGE didn’t provide comment or details of how it arrived at the spending cuts when asked by The Wall Street Journal.

   When Trump created DOGE by executive order, he tasked it with identifying ways to cut spending and regulation in a way that would make the government more efficient. “Elon is doing a great job. He’s finding tremendous fraud and corruption and waste,” Trump said Friday.

   The federal government is projected to spend $7 trillion in the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Of that, Social Security payments account for roughly $1.6 trillion, Medicare—a government-run health program for seniors—is projected to cost $910 billion, and another $812 billion would go toward Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and healthcare marketplace subsidies.

   Other massive parts of the budget include more than $850 billion for military spending, $950 billion in net interest payments on the debt and then a bucket that includes education, housing, transportation and other programs totaling close to $1 trillion.
   Musk’s group, so far, appears to be targeting a subset of programs in those buckets, but he has signaled that he thinks there are much bigger savings elsewhere in the budget that his group is now shifting its attention to. For example, his group recently gained access to Medicare and Medicaid’s contracting and payments system, where they say they are looking for evidence of fraud. Trump on Friday said Musk will also look at the Education Department and “at military, too.”

   DOGE was also involved in cutting National Institutes of Health grant money for overhead, according to a person familiar with the matter. Scientists quickly decried the cuts, saying they would devastate important medical research. The agency estimated the cuts, announced Friday night, would save $4 billion a year by capping at 15% the fees that universities and institutions get to pay for lab-support services, rather than individually negotiated rates that can exceed 60%. “Amazing Job by #NIH team,” DOGE posted on social media.

   President Trump

   The U.S. Government Accountability Office, an arm of Congress, has estimated that there was $100 billion in improper payments made in 2023 in Medicare and Medicaid. Whether Musk’s team can identify and eliminate that funding is unclear.

   “If the priority had been to actually cut waste and fraud in federal spending, they’re not looking in the right places,” because the costs of the federal workforce are a fraction of the federal budget, said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, an independent government watchdog. The Trump administration has notified agencies of plans to shrink the federal workforce. Brian said DOGE should focus on excessive payments to government contractors and military spending.

   Because some of the spending that DOGE has targeted is money appropriated by Congress and signed into law by former President Joe Biden, a number of lawmakers have alleged that attempting to claw back this money is illegal. Musk and Russell Vought, Trump’s new budget director, have challenged this precedent and are expected to fight it in court.

   DOGE has been given a sweeping mandate by Trump to overhaul the executive branch. But less than a month into his presidency, the outfit faces a bevy of legal challenges and public criticism over its methods and powers. On Saturday, a federal judge temporarily shut down DOGE’s access to a sensitive Treasury Department payment system, and on Friday, a federal court paused efforts to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Musk had touted as being fed “into the wood chipper.”

   Workers for DOGE have entered several government agencies with an eye toward paring spending and terminating contracts, including the Office of Personnel Management, the Treasury Department and the parent agency of the National Weather Service.

   Federal watchdogs and good-government groups, for their part, have spent years tallying the billions of tax dollars they say are wasted. Last May, for instance, GAO identified billions in savings if lawmakers reauthorized a broadband network for first responders and if the Education Department helped verify the incomes of those repaying certain student loans.

   Fixing those, the agency said, “could yield financial benefits of tens of billions of dollars and improved government services, among other benefits.”

   Cost-cutting is a bipartisan political mantra in Washington that has long been popular with constituents and that pairs with Watergate-era reforms of agency accountability. Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.), a critic of government spending, publishes his yearly “Festivus” report that singled out $1 trillion last year. Democrats, for their part, also publicly champion plans to counter wasteful spending and duplication. And for years, taxpayers have been able to search online for the details of government contracts and spending.

   DOGE—which, as currently designed, is an entity within the White House—is supposed to present its recommendations to taxpayers on July 4, 2026. Musk and the group are moving much more quickly, though, to try to cancel contracts and even direct changes in congressional approval.

   1. “Musk’s team is also working with the General Services Administration, which manages government buildings and commercial real estate, to identify which leases can be canceled or let lapse, looking for underused office space and ways to consolidate.”

      I hope they identify these landlords, where they worship, etc.

7. “ a huge economic hit one way or another with ripple effects that won’t stop at the nonprofits,’ ”
   Ahhhh, ripple effects, I love the smell of ripple effects in the morning.
   Does that mean Chelsie will have to get a job?

   1. Does that mean Chelsie will have to get a job?

      I’m sure she already has millions squirreled away. At worst she might have to sell the private jet.

8. Realtors are liars.

9. New York Times Editorial Board — Trump’s Shameful Campaign Against Transgender Americans (2/9/2025):

   “Some of the most deplorable episodes in U.S. history involve the government wielding the power of the state against minority groups: Black people, Indigenous people and gay people, to name just a few. Though these campaigns might have received popular support at the time, history has consistently judged them as immoral, illegal and un-American.”

   Immoral? We’ll get back to that term.

   “Rather than understanding this history, President Trump is borrowing from the worst of it. One of the very first acts of his second term was to order the government to view gender as immutable and discriminate against transgender citizens. “As of today,” he declared in his Inaugural Address, “it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female.”

   It should be recognized that society is still grappling with the cultural and policy implications of the rapidly shifting understanding of gender. There are some issues — such as participation in sports and appropriate medical care for minors — that remain fiercely debated, even by those who broadly support trans rights. There should be room for those conversations. But what shouldn’t be debated is whether the government should target a group of Americans to be stripped of their freedom and dignity to move through the world as they choose. This is a campaign in which cruelty and humiliation seem to be the fundamental point.”

   https://archive.ph/7e7Bs

   “Appropriate medical care for minors” what were you saying about morality, New York Times?

   The “cruelty and humiliation” is being told to Trust TheScience™ that is in complete denial of what is taught at the level of a high school biology class. This country is done with this Clown World freak show. Drag queens have always existed, doing their drag shows, in bars, for an adult audience.

   When you came for the kids, that’s when you lost.

10. Washington Post — In Idaho, a preview of RFK Jr.’s vaccine-skeptical America (2/9/2025):

    “Nevertheless, the regional health board in Idaho voted 4-3 that October afternoon to prohibit the district’s four public health clinics from distributing the coronavirus vaccine, three years after the vaccine became widely available — a sign of skepticism over its use that has only deepened as widespread death and fear during the pandemic fade from public memory. The board, one of seven in the state, covers six counties.

    It marked the first time in the United States that access to a vaccine has been curtailed because of a local health board deeming it to be unsafe despite federal assurances, according to Adriane Casalotti, chief of government and public affairs for the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

    Public health experts said they fear other health boards across the country could follow the Idaho board’s lead in eschewing the medical consensus that the coronavirus vaccine is safe and effective at preventing hospitalizations and death as scientifically inaccurate information about vaccines swirls from the top of President Donald Trump’s potential health administration.”

    https://archive.ph/7XpHY

    Thalidomide was “safe and effective” until it wasn’t.

    Three quoted paragraphs, see how easy that was? You don’t have to read a book to scroll past it, and if you want to read the whole article you can click on the link.

    1. thank you for that.
       quote the relevant/hot parts and link the rest. No need to copy and paste the entire thing.

       1. +1

11. ‘Some pets we’re even finding left behind in foreclosed homes.’”

    Just like last time. I bought foreclosure in late ‘09 that came with a set of cats. The nice thing was that months without being fed led to a complete absence of rodents.

    1. Back in that time i had a business doing field mowing. (so those 1 to 20 acre residential ag properties, all around Denver) and it went from taking care of people’s property to doing a ton of work for the banks as it all collapsed.

       I found a dead horse on one property. (the hard way) buried by 6′ tall weeds and such (which was pretty common with these foreclosed properties) They had just left their horse, all the wood was eaten off the railings which is apparently what horses do when they are starving.

       F those people leaving their animals. Special place in hell.

12. New York Post — Prominent pundit wonders if left wing ‘nuttiness’ has damaged Democratic Party beyond repair (2/8/2025):

    “Prominent mainstream media journalist and author Joe Klein savaged the Democratic Party, claiming that its recent Democratic National Committee meeting proves the party’s “intellectual corrosion is comprehensive.”

    In a new article for his “Sanity Clause” Substack series, Klein pointed out the various gender rules that the DNC rolled out during its meeting last week as proof that the party may be damaged beyond anything he’s ever seen.

    “Yes, friends, still crazy after all these years…and the encroaching dementia is not benign. Can this party be saved? I have my doubts,” Klein wrote after quoting multiple articles detailing the complex gender rules established at the meeting.

    He began with The Atlantic staff writer Jonathan Chait’s account of the proceedings. In his article, headlined, The Democrats Show Why They Lost,” Chait wrote that “outgoing chair, Jaime Harrison, attempted to explain a point about its rules concerning gender balance for its vice-chair race. ‘The rules specify that when we have a gender-nonbinary candidate or officer, the nonbinary individual is counted as neither male nor female, and the remaining six officers must be gender balanced,’ Harrison announced.”

    Klein followed up by quoting Wall Street Journal reporter Molly Ball’s account.“Later in the program, an audience member stood up to lament that there was only one at-large seat set aside for a transgender person, and called on the candidates to add another seat and for ‘making sure those appointments reflect the gender and ethnic diversity of the transgender community.’”

    https://nypost.com/2025/02/08/us-news/prominent-pundit-joe-klein-wonders-if-left-wing-nuttiness-has-damaged-democratic-party-beyond-repair/

    Democrat Party explain how this is going to win back the male vote? Specifically the young male vote?

    The only males who will vote for this are the Reddit, soy, seed oil, Non-Player Characters, who if they somehow enter a relationship with a female, are getting cucked by Chad.

    You can’t satisfy her. She only wants your Beta Bucks.

    1. Related article. It’s Salon, no link provided (2/9/2025):

       “We lost the presidential race and the Senate and failed to win back the House last year because we have been consistently losing white, Black, Hispanic and Asian middle-class voters over the past 25 years. This is an open wound which is bleeding profusely and if not addressed, could be the death of the patient. The loss in 2024 was not simply about Joe Biden’s late departure from the Democratic field. We had an opportunity during the primary campaign (when we ignored Rep. Dean Phillips’ warnings) to voice our concerns about Biden’s age or to remind him that we voted for him in 2020 to defeat Donald Trump and serve one term.”

       Democrat Party always bleating about “saving our democracy” couldn’t even field a primary campaign. F*ing hypocrites.

       “Blue-collar voters in the heartland states (don’t call it the Rust Belt) have seen their jobs disappear due to trade, technology and globalization. You hear repeatedly from workers who once had good jobs in a steel plant or highly-paid jobs assembling cars that their lives are now virtually over. They recall being 35 years old and making great money but now, perhaps, they must work as Uber drivers, and make half their previous salary. They will tell you their children have “no future” in getting good jobs or achieving the American Dream. This is a wrenching gut-punch to the soul. Democrats need to be the working-class voice of frustration and their hammer for change.”

       Maybe you were 50 years ago. That ship has sailed.

       “Democrats did not lose the election in 2024 because we defended transgender choices or believe in climate change. We are morally right on both issues.”

       There’s that term again: morally right.

       It’s nothing more than a money grab. What better reward for Big Pharma than creating and increasing a cohort of alleged “patients” requiring a lifetime of “care” from Big Pharma, paid for of course by U.S. taxpayers.

       Raising taxes to change the weather? As I’ve posted here before, no different than the medieval Catholic Church selling “indulgences” to its poor parishioners to wash away their sins.

       #FAIL

13. Overall construction costs tripled amid the pandemic, the grand jury reported, so a 1,500-square-foot house that would have cost $350,000 to rebuild pre-COVID could cost more than $1 million after the fire.”

    1M dollars how much is actually construction costs ?

    1. “Overall construction costs tripled amid the pandemic”

       Greatest FRAUD of my lifetime.

       Muh Supply Chains what a f*ing joke. I remember in 2022-2023 that it was six months out to procure Eaton brand 50 amp GFCI circuit breakers.

       All because of your phony virus, with your phony PCR tests, and your phony vaccines.

       And a reminder, your alleged “virus” was merely incidental, tangential, almost an after thought to, the Big Government response of unscientific medical tyranny.

       Your whole narrative is #FAIL. Only NPC’s (i.e. Reddit) still drink that Kool-Aid.

       1. There was only one endpoint for their policies, had they been able to stay in power: South Africa 2.0. Just look at California to see where we were headed.

14. Even if the funds are coming from philanthropic sources, why is the money not going to the many many people who have llost [sic] everything? Why would an elderly and wealthy man think it proper to take this money home? Disgusting.”

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/02/09/steve-soboroff-agrees-work-for-free-after-500000-salary-exposed/

    1. The reason the money does not go to those who need it here in the US, is because the Democrats don’t have to actually use it here, they only have to promise to and the idiots continue to vote for them, until now,

15. [An amusing article …]

    Africa is Breaking Apart: A New Ocean Is Forming at Breakneck Speed—Faster Than Expected.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/africa-is-breaking-apart-a-new-ocean-is-forming-at-breakneck-speed-faster-than-expected/ar-AA1yHdyr?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=ffde7a993fb14420953e5e2ad7d72bd1&ei=29

    The African continent is undergoing a dramatic transformation as tectonic forces carve a path toward the formation of a new ocean. The East African Rift System, a vast network of faults stretching from Mozambique to the Red Sea, is actively reshaping the landscape. Recent studies suggest this process, once thought to span tens of millions of years, could unfold in as little as a million years—maybe even sooner.

    [Breakneck speed = A million years. Got it.]

    [Which means …]

    Potential impacts of Africa’s new ocean

    ・New coastlines: Landlocked countries like Zambia and Uganda could gain ocean access.

    ・Economic opportunities: The shift could create new trade routes and ports, transforming regional economies.

    ・Ecosystem evolution: The emergence of a marine environment will create new habitats, altering biodiversity.

    ・Infrastructure challenges: Nations will need to adapt to rising sea levels, shifting landscapes, and seismic activity.

    While the prospect of a new ocean sounds distant, the implications for Africa’s future geography are enormous. Scientists continue to refine models predicting how and when this transformation will unfold, calling for increased monitoring, research, and preparation.

16. Since we’re on the subject of FRAUD, let’s take a trip down memory lane.

    Florida Man Killed in Crash Listed as COVID-19 Death, Raising Doubts Over Health Data (7/20/2020):

    https://www.newsweek.com/florida-man-killed-crash-listed-covid-19-death-raising-doubts-over-health-data-1518994

    Coroner: State included a murder-suicide in Grand’s COVID deaths (12/15/2020):

    https://www.skyhinews.com/news/coroner-state-included-a-murder-suicide-in-grands-covid-deaths/

    And this, one of my favorite #Narratives. It took a few minutes of searching to find a readable article, because globalist scum media just wish you would all forget and go back to your sportsball and goyslop.

    Systemic Racism Poses a Far Greater Public Health Threat Than Protests Against Police Violence (6/11/2020):

    https://theintercept.com/2020/06/11/systemic-racism-protests-coronavirus-health-risk/

    June of 2020, did you say? Summer 2020 was when the actual Insurrection occurred, with the seizure and occupation of both public and private property, in Seattle, by armed, self-appointed warlords.

    100+ consecutive nights of violent, left wing (redundant, I know) riots in Portland.

    The stacks of bricks conspicuously appearing on urban street corners across the U.S. (look for the Soros receipts).

    The de facto decriminalization of assault, and even murder, as long as the perpetrators are BLM or Antifa (look for the Soros receipts).

    Real Journalists and your other Betters think that you’ll forget about all of this. We won’t.

    1. Archive link for the Intercept article if you don’t feel like entering a fake email and clicking the X to bypass article registration:

       https://archive.ph/hX28X

       Note that Archive is how we can all read the New York Times, Washington Post, etc. for FREE and without registration. They’ve already stolen millions of taxpayer dollars via USAID and other illegitimate funding sources, let’s not give them another fraction of a cent by loading ads on articles on their actual websites. No more free cheese for you!

17. If you consider the thief by the Powers that Be of US taxes, add to that the looting of public health by a Corrupt Health and food system, and add endless Wars, the US should of have public roads paved in gold by now .
    Not only was the US set up to be the military arm of the World , it was set up to advance the perverse motives of Powers intent on keeping humanity from advancing into prosperity .
    We could of gotten out of the vicious cycles of war, famine, disease, poverty and traded it in for World peace, prosperity, health and Science employed to advance civilization.
    Instead resources were used to advance the Agenda of Entities that enslave humanity, replace humanity, posion humanity, defraud humanity, genocide humanity, control humanity, while they create disease and threaten life on earth by their evil that knows no bounds.
    Humanity would of organized into productive and cooperative and organized life sustaining life force and advanced if given the chance to be free, unburdened by what has been.
    These Powers that Be are anti life, insane psychopaths that threaten the continuance of life forms with their vision of destruction of the human race , animals, plants and earth for their long planned One World Order . They offer nothing to the real life force that they parasite off.
    This enemy is truly like a parasite virus that wants to destroy the immune system of the earth, so it can invade and kill the host.
    This parasite virus that has exposed itself as the biggest threat to humanity and earth , are a group of humans turning on humans like a cancer cell turns on a body.
    Just saving.

18. Local news from a few days ago.

    Westword — Anti-ICE Rally to Follow Fifty State Protest in Denver (2/7/2025):

    ”
    The Denver branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) is planning to gather on Saturday, February 8, at the Colorado State Capitol to protest deportations and raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The demonstration, set to start at 2 p.m., will include a march, according to PSL organizer Katie Leonard.

    “It’ll be a rally and a march to stand with our immigrant neighbors after raids have started this week in Aurora and Denver,” Leonard says. “ICE is the bad guys in the streets. We are going to be out there until they leave our community.”

    The PSL is hoping to “build on the momentum” of the Fifty State Protest in Denver on February 5 at the Colorado State Capitol. An estimated 5,000 people showed up at the Capitol throughout the day for the event, according to the Colorado State Patrol, and protested Trump’s deportations and ICE raids. Before noon, protesters began marching through the streets of downtown Denver, and some stayed well past the planned 8 p.m. stop time.

    Wednesday’s protest was originally meant to take aim against Project 2025, a conservative policy plan written by the Heritage Foundation before Trump took office. Mexican and immigrant pride as well as anger with ICE took over as the main themes of Denver’s Fifty State Protest, however, although LGBTQ rights were also a theme of the day.

    Denver’s PSL branch hadn’t seen such large crowds of protesters since the George Floyd and Elijah McClain protests in 2020, Leonard says.”

    https://www.westword.com/news/denver-anti-ice-rally-follow-50-state-protest-state-capitol-23410354

    Since 2020, did you say? “Building momentum” = it’s only a matter of time until there are armed carjackings of citizens and taxpayers in Downtown Denver, with ZERO consequences for the perpetrators.

    1. Related article.

       Denver7 — Judge dismisses case against unlicensed security guard who shot and killed man outside Denver rallies (3/21/2022):

       “A judge in Denver agreed Monday to drop the murder case against Matthew Dolloff, the unlicensed security guard who shot and killed a protester outside of dueling political rallies near Civic Center Park in October 2020.

       The Denver District Attorney’s Office had said earlier this month it planned to drop the lone charge of second-degree murder Dolloff faced in the shooting death of 49-year-old Lee Keltner because it did not have evidence to prove Dolloff was guilty of the charge.

       According to an arrest affidavit, as the two rallies – a “Patriot muster” and a “BLM-Antifa Soup Drive” – were winding down that day, Keltner got into an argument with a man between the Denver Art Museum and Denver Public Library.

       Dolloff got involved in the argument as the journalist he was assigned to protect filmed it. According to the affidavit and video and photos from the scene, Keltner slapped Dolloff in the face. As Keltner produced and started to discharge a can of bear spray, Dolloff pulled out a handgun and shot Keltner, who was pronounced dead at Denver Health Medical Center about half an hour later.”

       https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/judge-dismisses-case-against-unlicensed-security-guard-who-shot-and-killed-man-outside-denver-rallies

       Denver voted 79 to 19 in the 2024 election. Murder is, and will remain, legal in Denver, as long as you’re collecting a Soros paycheck.

       Housing? Yes, housing, because if you’re foolish enough to buy property in Denver, this is what your property taxes are paying for.

       1. Related article, it took about five minutes to find it, Real Journalists and globalist scum social media / search engines do NOT want you to remember this.

          Western Journal — Arsonists Are Targeting Homes With American Flags (6/14/2020):

          “In a Sacramento suburb, arsonists specifically targeted homes that were flying American flags, causing residents to question what could prompt such attacks.”

          What could prompt this? Soros paychecks, now recently revealed to have been sourced from U.S. taxpayers.

          “According to a KOVR-TV report, police are investigating at least four incidents that occurred in Citrus Heights, just outside California’s capital, in the early morning hours of June 6 — the anniversary of the historic D-Day landing during World War II and just eight days before the United States celebrated Flag Day.

          Marie Nuzzi, a resident of the Sungarden neighborhood where the crimes occurred, had her American flag set ablaze, leaving only a pile of soot under a blackened flagpole.

          “If it had burned longer it would have caught the house on fire,” Nuzzi said. “Somebody’s lives, for what?”

          The flagpole was attached to her home near the roof, which would have created a dangerous situation had the fire spread.

          Nuzzi decided not to replace the flag.

          “It’s not worth it for me to put my family through it,” she told KOVR.

          It isn’t just the American flag that is under attack during these, but all of the symbols of America as protesters take out their anger on not just police, but also the very founding of the United States.

          Disdaining the democratic process, the mob has come for just about every representation of America and its history.”

          https://www.westernjournal.com/arsonists-targeting-homes-american-flags/

          Marie, your response to this is exactly what they want. Demoralized, defeated, ashamed of your country.

          The HBB remembers. We will not forget. Nor will we rest on the laurels of the perceived positive trajectory of the first twenty days of the DJT 47 administration.

          These people are still out there, and they want you dead.

    2. When I think of illegal immigrants from Latin America, the first thing that comes to mind is the lgbtqia+ community.

       1. You’d be surprised at the inroads they have made in Mexico. In decades past they stayed in the closet, today they are in your face, just like here.

          1. “…today they are in your face…”

             Experienced that at work after King Obama strengthened Title VII and IX.

    3. “It’ll be a rally and a march to stand with our immigrant neighbors after raids have started this week in Aurora and Denver,” Leonard says. “ICE is the bad guys in the streets. We are going to be out there until they leave our community.”

       The joke’s on them. That will make Homan double down on Dumver, and maybe get more than a few of them arrested for obstruction and harboring illegals.

       Of course it is likely that their words are little more than hot air and they will be nowhere to be found when the raids resume.

19. A father of five was detained by ICE on his way to work. Now his family is losing their home

    Jose Luis had stopped to pump gas on his way to work in southern Texas when his family’s whole life changed.

    ICE agents pulled up out of nowhere and demanded to know his immigration status. The father of five, who came to the United States from Mexico in 2010 when he was 19, was quickly placed in handcuffs and taken away.

    Now, he is facing deportation and permanent separation from his wife and kids — and the family’s sole income is gone.

    “His little girls ask every day ‘Where’s Dad? What time is he coming home?’” his wife, Rosa, who doesn’t want to break her children’s heart by revealing the truth just yet, tells The Independent. “I have to tell them he’s out working.”

    “I’m really stressed right now, like really, really stressed. I don’t know what’s next,” she says.

    Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Friday that her country has received nearly 11,000 deported migrants since Trump took office, including around 2,500 non-Mexicans.

    Jose Luis’s family is one of thousands to have been plunged into crisis by the increased arrests. As the sole breadwinner, they relied on money from a small plumbing business he started.

    “There was so much going through my head when I found out,” Rosa says. “All the payments for the house, the kids.”

    Since Jose Luis was detained on 26 January, Rosa has had to sell belongings just to stay afloat. She sold two pickup trucks owned by the business and is being forced to leave the mobile home where they live and move in with her parents because she can’t afford the payments.

    “It’s so shocking. We’ve been here for a long time, and this has never happened to us. So I’m just speechless,” she tells The Independent.

    Rosa met Jose Luis in 2018 at a race track in Texas where they both live, and quickly fell in love. She had two children from a previous relationship, and they had three more together to form a large blended family.

    Their sons, aged 11 and 2, and their three daughters, aged 9, 5 and 4, were all born in the U.S. They lived a happy life in small-town Texas before the arrests. Now, their family has been broken apart and she doesn’t know when or if they will be reunited.

    She has only been able to speak to Jose Luis a few times since his arrest and has been desperately trying to raise money to mount a legal defense. But she fears the future.

    “In the interview, they said that he didn’t have an option for a bond or to see a judge, so he will be deported,” she says.

    Even before her husband was arrested, she says the ICE raids had a dramatic impact on their town.

    “There’s a lot of people here in fear for their lives. The streets are really lonely. The stores are lonely. I mean, it was a big change,” she says.

    “There are already people moving back to their countries because they’re scared of what’s coming next. Friends of mine that are removing their kids from school, moving to Mexico.”

    While she tries to raise money to fight Jose Luis’s deportation, Rosa says she can’t imagine leaving the place she has called home since she was four years old.

    “Honestly, I was that person that would be like, I’m a Texas girl, I wouldn’t move from Texas. But with all this going on, I’m speechless.”

    “I didn’t expect this. All I see on the news is Texas targeting all Hispanic people, all immigrants, and that’s really sad to us,” she says.

    https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/a-father-of-five-was-detained-by-ice-on-his-way-to-work-now-his-family-is-losing-their-home/ar-AA1yFcsG

    1. There’s a lot of people here in fear for their lives.

       They make it sound like hey will be executed.

       And there is nothing stopping her from liquidating their assets and joining him in Mexico.

       1. This is an example of why we have lost tradesmen. Plumbers coming in undercutting wages, not reporting cash payments, cutting corners, shoddy work. The woman and her rug rats are all getting free cheese medical care, schools, medical. And they are likely racists like most Mexicans.

          1. And they are likely racists like most Mexicans.

             Curiously, Mexicans chose a member of the tribe over a fellow mestiza for President, with Claudia getting over 60% of the vote. Of course, Claudia was promising free cheese while Xochitl preached hard work as the way to lift Mexico out of poverty.

          2. “This is an example of why we have lost tradesmen”

             I could spin yards of tales on this subject, but out of respect, try to keep such anecdotals brief and specific.

             Electricity doesn’t care what color your skin is, what country you were born in, or what languages you speak or don’t speak.

             It wants to kill you, and if you give it a path to ground through your body, it will.

             Completing the OSHA 30 course covered many other non electrical trades, other construction activities, and all their associated job hazards.

             FAFO. I’ve mostly been on smaller jobsites the past few years, but the sh*t I’ve seen on big jobsites in Denver before that … first and foremost, you need to pay attention to where you are, who and what is around you.

             The tuba music isn’t helping anything. Seems like the more tuba, the lower the quality of the framing, etc. that i see.

             Imagine buying a house built at that low quality. I never would.

             1. This is no small matter. This guy has his whole family living on the guberment teat. Probably never filed an income tax return. No license. No insurance, bonding or workmans comp. He can undercut a gringo bid every day all day. And soon they’ll tell us plumbing is a job American’s won’t do.

    2. Texas targeting all Hispanic people

       Well Rosa, how can that be true if they didn’t target you, your kids or your parents?

       1. not yet
          but they can go too

    3. I bet those lonely streets are a lot safer. And fewer catalytic converters are being hacksawed off in the middle of the night.

20. “…phony virus, with your phony PCR tests, and your phony vaccines.”

    And add to that phony Climate Change Doomsday.

    All the real evidence shows that these false manufactured narratives were designed to launch warfare against the human race under the pretenses of saving humanity. The real agenda was to destroy all systems of sustainable life for humanity, and replace with a One World Order that
    steals all resources and subject humanity to enslavement in a unfree world.

21. The kindergarten teachers never came back to the playroom. The doctor stopped showing up at the medical center. Overnight, the resources Pastor Francisco González Palacios had once offered at his migrant shelter disappeared.

    US President Donald Trump’s 90-day aid freeze—the same one that shuttered international vaccine efforts and malaria prevention programs—had made its way across the border with Mexico.

    As Trump’s migration policies and foreign retrenchment ripple throughout the world, cities like Ciudad Juárez—across from the border from El Paso, Texas—are getting hit by all of it. Trump last month suspended an asylum program and stranded thousands of migrants who had been waiting to hand themselves in to US officials.

    For González, the problems are acute: The UN helped pay for the dorms and bathrooms. Its children’s fund provided the basic medical checks for kids and teenagers. Even the toothpaste, deodorant and a stash of OFF! bug spray came from the UN.

    These agencies receive much of their funding from the US, which under Trump’s direction has moved to strip the United States Agency for International Development—the world’s largest provider of foreign assistance—of most of its projects and put the majority of its employees on leave.

    Other organizations with funds from the US government are being affected, too. Kids in Need of Defense closed up its northern Mexico border programs in January. Asylum Access posted an advisory that its funds had been affected, limiting its ability to hire in Mexico. A spokesperson for UNICEF in Mexico said that the US “has over the course of our history been an important donor” and that the organization hoped the funding would resume as soon as possible.

    “We’re people of faith, and so we’ll continue doing this work whether or not they help us,” said González, who converted his own bedroom into a larger kitchen for shelter residents. “It’s something we do from the heart. But if we pay for all of this, and on top of that pay for food, we won’t manage.”

    Lesdy Marín took her 2-year-old to Hotel Ursula, which has newspapers plastered onto the windows of its ground floor and advertises a bed for 180 pesos a night. She joked with her mother—who is fronting the room’s cost—that it was only thanks to Mexican officials that she had ever been on a plane: They had forcibly sent her back to the country’s south twice, as she tried to reach Ciudad Juárez.

    Turning back isn’t an option. Marín fears a custody battle with abusive ex-boyfriend if she returns to Colombia, or debt-collectors if she returns to her mother’s town in Venezuela. She says she’s convinced her daughter that much of their running was part of a game and spent time calling her cousins in the US to figure out what to do.

    “My cousins say I should stay here and not move, because according to them, I’m going to be able to cross at some point,” she said. “But I don’t know when.”

    At the Casa del Migrante, one of the city’s larger shelters, deported Mexicans who had spent decades living in the US have appeared in the last two weeks alongside foreigners figuring out their options. There are crosses at the entrance decorated with the baggage tags from the US Department of Homeland Security and the plastic wristbands worn by the deportees from years passed, hung next to dozens of rosaries they’d brought from detention.

    Others who have given up on crossing into the US are simply waiting for the IOM to fly them back home. It’s one of the services that hasn’t yet been cut.

    https://businessmirror.com.ph/2025/02/09/thousands-adrift-at-the-border-lose-their-us-financial-lifeline/

    1. Surely MexPrez Claudia can step into the void and fund them.

    2. Marín fears a custody battle with abusive ex-boyfriend if she returns to Colombia

       Sometimes bad decisions come in batches.

    3. Turning back isn’t an option. Marín fears a custody battle with abusive ex-boyfriend if she returns to Colombia, or debt-collectors if she returns to her mother’s town in Venezuela.

       Sounds like a litany of bad choices, none of which are the fault or concern of U.S. taxpayers.

22. Articles with accurate reporting about the specific circumstances of these events are difficult to find, by intent, and by design.

    Post Millennial — Texas Army soldier who fatally shot armed BLM protestor charged with murder (7/2/2021):

    “A Black Lives Matter protest in the streets of downtown Austin on July 25 turned violent when, Garrett Foster, who was armed with an AK-47, was killed amid an armed standoff with a Sgt. Daniel Perry, who shot and killed him while being confronted by protesters.

    The crowd then surrounded Perry’s vehicle, which is when Foster and Perry came face to face. Foster, a 28-year-old Air Force veteran, was carrying an Ak-47 rifle, which is legal under Texas open carry laws.

    The Black Lives Matter street-level instigator, 28-year-old Foster, expressed his violent intent earlier that night in an interview while openly carrying his AK-47.

    “If I used it against the cops, I’m dead,” Foster stated. However, it wasn’t the police who shot him but an armed civilian who Foster said he didn’t think would fight back. “I think all the people that hate us and wanna say shit to us are too big of pu**ies to stop and actually do anything about it,” he said, ironically.

    The incident, which has conflicting reports of how it unfolded, resulted in Foster dying of multiple gunshot wounds from Perry shooting Foster with a handgun before fleeing, the Tribune reports. Cops said Perry was legally armed as well.

    Perry’s attorneys said that once Perry had turned onto the street, protestors began beating on his car. Foster had approached Perry and reportedly motioned with his gun for his to roll his window down.

    Perry complied, thinking that Foster was a law enforcement officer. Once Foster aimed his weapon at him, he realized that he was not an officer, and allegedly fired in self defense, according to the attorneys.”

    https://thepostmillennial.com/texas-army-armed-blm-protestor-murder

    1. Related article. It’s not all bad news, sometimes good things can happen.

       KXAN — Gov. Abbott pardons Daniel Perry after he shot, killed protester in 2020 (5/17/2024):

       “Abbott quickly signed a proclamation after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously to grant a full pardon and restore gun rights to Daniel Perry, a former Army sergeant found guilty of murder by a jury in April 2023 and later sentenced to 25 years in prison.

       In a statement Thursday, Abbott said, “The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles conducted an exhaustive review of U.S. Army Sergeant Daniel Perry’s personal history and the facts surrounding the July 2020 incident and recommended a Full Pardon and Restoration of Full Civil Rights of Citizenship. Among the voluminous files reviewed by the Board, they considered information provided by the Travis County District Attorney, the full investigative report on Daniel Perry, plus a review of all the testimony provided at trial. Texas has one of the strongest ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive District Attorney. I thank the Board for its thorough investigation, and I approve their pardon recommendation.”

       Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton posted his reaction on X, formerly known as Twitter, to the news of Abbott pardoning Perry.

       “Americans across the country have been watching this case in Texas and praying for justice after BLM riots terrorized the nation in 2020,” Paxton wrote. “Our right to self-defense is enshrined in the Constitution. Soros-backed prosecutors like Jose Garza do not get to pick and choose the rights we have as Americans, and I am relieved that justice has prevailed.”

       https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/full-pardon-recommended-for-daniel-perry-after-travis-county-murder-conviction/

       Thank you AG Paxton for your #Noticing and #Naming. Stories like this are encouraging, but the Post Millennial article above should serve as a chilling warning of what to expect during the next four years.

       Avoid cities, all cities. Because regardless of who presently controls the White House and Congress, the mayors and city councils of every deep blue sh*thole city will toss you in the gulag for daring defend yourself against Democrat Party brownshirts. The Perry pardon, in Austin of all places, should be considered a rare exception of what you can expect…

    2. Scratch one Soros scum. FAFO, BLM-Antifa rent-a-mobs.

23. The RAM, Dodge and Fiat dealer in our town is gone, their buildings and lots are stripped clean. Higher interest rates likely killed ’em.

    1. We had a Chrysler dealer here crater during the previous crash. They had customers cars in the shop, disassembled, when they closed their doors.

       1. “They had customers cars in the shop, disassembled, when they closed their doors.”

          Yeah, hate it when that happens!

24. ‘Would 7.25 lakh Indians be dumped back..?’ Manish Tewari criticises EAM S Jaishankar over US deportations

    While the row over the government’s handling of deportations from the United States of undocumented Indians is ongoing, Congress MP Manish Tewari has criticised External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar for attending “inane conferences” around the world.

    Tewari noted that there are around 7.25 lakh undocumented Indians in the US and 24,000 being held in detention camps. In a harsh post on social media platform X, he wrote, “According to US estimates there are 7.25 lakh undocumented Indians in the United States of America. 24,000 Indians are in US detention camps. 487 have been served final detention orders. 298 out of the 487 have been positively identified as Indians.” (sic)

    He also questioned the treatment of returning Indians by US authorites and alleged inaction about the human rights violations. “Would 7.25 lakh Indians be dumped back in India handcuffed & shackled stripped of their basic human rights and dignity in US Military planes as while Jaishankar trapezes around the world attending inane conferences?” (sic) Tewari questioned.

    https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/India/would-7-25-lakh-indians-be-dumped-back-manish-tewari-criticises-eam-s-jaishankar-over-us-deportations/ar-AA1yG2bT

    1. Over 700,000 illegal Indians. Considering that India is on the other side of the globe, that is quite a feat.

       And, yes, they have to be cuffed, because otherwise they could riot on the airplane and possibly make it crash.

25. Mexican nationals, with combined 7 deportations, charged with stealing cargo from freight train in Mojave Desert

    Two Mexican nationals have been charged with stealing cargo from a freight train in the Mojave Desert, according to the Justice Department. The men allegedly took approximately 71 cases of construction tools.

    Jesus Omar Lopez Quintero, 34, and Juan Alonso Hernandez Enrique, 24, were charged with possession or receipt of goods stolen from interstate shipment, removing goods from customs custody and breaking seals, and illegal reentry into the United States following deportation. During their initial appearances in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, a federal magistrate judge ordered them detained and scheduled their arraignment for February 25.

    “This case demonstrates the threat that transnational criminal theft organizations pose to our nation’s commerce, as well as the danger posed to trains and their operators,” said Acting United States Attorney Joseph McNally. “Our office will aggressively prosecute those who repeatedly violate our laws and ensure they face consequences in the criminal justice system.”

    The San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department received a call about a suspicious vehicle near train tracks in Barstow on January 28. Officers observed a white cargo van driving away from a stopped freight train with an open shipping container. After a pursuit, Quintero and Enrique fled into the desert but were apprehended. Authorities found approximately 71 cases of Milwaukee Tools in the van, valued at $16,307, and 13 cases near the train tracks, valued at $7,792.

    Quintero has been deported from the U.S. to Mexico five times since 2013 and has previous convictions for illegal entry. Enrique was deported twice in 2022. If convicted, both face up to 10 years in federal prison for the theft charges and up to two years for illegal reentry.

    https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/state/mexican-nationals-with-combined-7-deportations-charged-with-stealing-cargo-from-freight-train-in-mojave/article_73bbd265-ebfe-55e7-a1ea-eaa5e37deee2.html

    1. Each of the two defendants have FOUR names? Is that like a hyphenation thing to get more names, or just flexing on four names because you have four names?

       “They’re not sending their best”

       1. Jesus Omar Lopez Quintero

          Jesus – First name
          Omar – Middle name
          Lopez – Paternal last name
          Quintero – Maternal last name

          Having paternal and maternal last names is standard in Spanish speaking countries

          The MexPrez’s full name is Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo

26. Larry Wilson: I, Donald Trump, will drop an atomic bomb on Canada

    I, Donald John Trump, will drop an atomic bomb on you, Canada, unless you reduce the price of automatic transmissions for use in our great American automobiles immediately.

    Unless, of course, you, Canada — the Great White North as we used to call it, and boy, howdy, does that moniker sound better and better every day — are already the 51st of the great United States of America by the time I have decided to drop an atomic bomb on you.

    Because even I, Donald John Trump — I know; what’s with the John? If my dotty immigrant mother were around, I could bug her about that — would not drop an atomic bomb, much less a hydrogen bomb, on a sacred state of the formerly greatest country in the world that is by the minute getting great again.

    That is the problem, isn’t it, for those of us — and that would be me — who like round numbers. Fifty-one states? Doesn’t sound kosher. We’d either have to get rid of one — and yes I am looking at you, California — or add one.

    And, no, Puerto Rico, I am not looking at you.

    Greenland? Now you’re talking.

    Plus your Panama, your Gaza, all kinds of states we could be adding. Sixty states? Why not. MORE on that in a minute.

    Because I need to talk with you, Canada, about the atomic bomb, which will soon be winging its way toward you, either in the bay of a very, very large B-52H Stratofortress, which, yes, is made by Boeing, but never mind that, or in the nose or wherever they put them of a very nasty intercontinental ballistic missile, I’m not telling you which, because that is part of The Art of the Deal — keep ‘em guessing.

    Do I have to talk about the price of transmissions to the French-named guy up in Ottawa or wherever, the guy whose dad did the Canada job too, only he was bald, and yet he still kept getting the hotties? Or aren’t they getting a new guy, so maybe I should talk to him.

    Or, maybe, you know, I should just drop the Big One — “Boom goes London, boom, Paree, more room for you and more room for me,” as the fella sang — and then we can talk? I’ve got a direct line to King-O-Matic, “Canada’s largest supplier of transmission and drivetrain components,” so maybe I should just get on the horn to them and we can talk turkey before the mushroom cloud.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/larry-wilson-i-donald-trump-will-drop-an-atomic-bomb-on-canada/ar-AA1yGA1F

27. The unbelievable, and haunted, backstory of Trump’s tariff chief, who called for aggressive action against Canada

    Aggression has defined Howard Lutnick’s professional life, for better and for worse. It has fuelled his success on Wall Street, helping him thrive in the cutthroat world of bond trading, and it also pushed his mentor’s wife to bar him from her husband’s funeral, after the protégé seized on a medical crisis to wrest control of the dying man’s company.

    Now it’s Canadians who are learning just how ruthless he can be.

    Fresh off his Senate confirmation hearings for the role of commerce secretary, Mr. Lutnick stood to Donald Trump’s left in the Oval Office on Monday as the U.S. President talked about hitting Canada with 25-per-cent tariffs. The new face in Mr. Trump’s inner circle not only supports tariffs against enemies, but is a vocal supporter of across-the-board tariffs against Canada, the United States’ closest ally.

    “If Canada is going to rely on America for its economic growth, how about you treat our farmers or ranchers and our fishermen with respect,” he said during his Senate confirmation hearings last week.

    Mr. Lutnick and Mr. Trump, both native New Yorkers, even talk the same way now. Complaining about the European Union’s trade rules on American beef, he told U.S. senators: “If you saw a European steer and an American steer, it’s laughable. The American steers are three times the size. The steaks are so much more beautiful.”

    It might simply be happenstance that Mr. Lutnick’s latest business interests align perfectly with Mr. Trump’s new obsessions: critical minerals and cryptocurrencies. But the two are definitely of one mind when it comes to what the President calls “the most beautiful word in the dictionary” – tariffs.

    “You want to come play here?” Mr. Lutnick said on a recent podcast, referring to companies who want to sell into the large U.S. market. “Pay. It’s like joining Costco. You’ve gotta pay to come in.”

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-howard-lutnick-profile-trump-trade-pick/

28. CBS News poll — Trump has positive approval amid “energetic” opening weeks; seen as doing what he promised.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-approval-opinion-poll-2025-2-9/

    With most describing him as “tough,” “energetic,” “focused” and “effective” — and as doing what he’d promised during his campaign — President Trump has started his term with net positive marks from Americans overall.

    Many say he’s doing more than they expected — and of those who say this, most like what they see. Very few think he’s doing less.

    His partisans and his voters, in particular, say he’s got the right amount of focus on matters like ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs and deporting those who are in the country illegally.

    His deportation policy finds majority approval overall — just as most voters said they wanted during the campaign — and that extends to sending troops to the border, too.

    But one key issue looms: Most Americans say the administration isn’t focused enough on lowering prices. Inflation was a key reason Mr. Trump won the election.

    [Clink the link to read the rest of the article and to look at the charts.]

    1. Most Americans say the administration isn’t focused enough on lowering prices.

       Cutting government spending will help with that, as we as removing regulations.

       1. as will getting rid of all the illegals

          1. The traitors are pushing the “we need them” narrative. A headline I saw today:

             Trump’s immigration raids ignore a looming global crisis: There just aren’t enough workers

             1. I hired a landscaper to mow the grass a few times a year. White, local, and entrepeneurial. Starting a business with his dad.

29. L.A. ‘Recovery Chief’ Steve Soboroff Agrees to Work for Free, After Grenell Exposes $500,000 Salary

    Joel B. Pollak
    9 Feb 2025

    Los Angeles “Chief Recovery Officer” Steve Soboroff said Saturday night that he would work for free, after coming under fire for earning $500,000 for three months of work, even though his salary was to have been paid privately.

    Earlier in the day, as Breitbart News reported, Ambassador Ric Grenell, who is representing President Donald Trump in overseeing the recovery effort from last month’s devastating fires, criticized Soboroff harshly for his salary.

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/02/09/steve-soboroff-agrees-work-for-free-after-500000-salary-exposed/

    1. It just goes to show, it’s NEVER about solving problems, it’s about getting their cut. And I’m sure his staff (who are likely cronies) are well paid too.

    2. December 26th, in a back yard Back East:

       https://ibb.co/prN2j2zw

       He’s been having some health problems and it’s very sad.

       1. “…and it’s very sad.”

          Agreed. Sorry to hear that.

       2. My best friend and constant companion for 15 years is laid at rest in a forest in PA where she liked to hunt squirrels with me. 45 years ago, it still is fresh in my mind. I was never really attached to another dog like that.

       3. I think that is the only dog that I loved but had never met. 🙁

30. David Sacks Explains Why DC Elites Are PANICKING Over USAID Exposure: ‘The Money is All Going to Them’

    by Infowars.com
    February 9th, 2025 1:09 PM

    1:58

    KanekoaTheGreat
    @KanekoaTheGreat

    NEW: @DavidSacks blasts USAID for using American taxpayers to fund left-wing organizations and policies around the world.

    “We’re in debt almost $40 trillion, and anytime anyone tries to cut anything in Washington, the whole city screams bloody murder. The question is, why? Well, now we know. The money is all going to them.”

    “New York Times, getting paid. Politico, getting paid. Bill Kristol, perennial warmonger, getting paid. Ukraine, like 11 out of 12 publications, getting paid. Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, was saying his political opposition is funded by USAID.”

    “In Poland, the left-wing political opposition is funded by USAID. BBC in the U.K. Every left-wing organization in the world seems to be getting paid by this slush fund at USAID, which distributes $50 billion a year. That’s a billion dollars a week. That’s a lot of money.”

    “It makes you wonder. The left, in general, tries to portray itself as a movement of the people. That it’s grassroots, this is the exact opposite. This is astroturf. This money is coming from the top down out of Washington to fund all these groups all over the world. So it makes you wonder, what is the real level of local support for these left-wing policies all over the world?”

    7:24 PM · Feb 7, 2025

    https://x.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1888021014585688435

    1. ‘So it makes you wonder, what is the real level of local support for these left-wing policies all over the world?’

       Or in another way, what would it’s support be if all these millions hadn’t been paid to tell the public how great it was? Over and over.

       This whole thing has been mind-blowing. For instance, we’ve all seen the videos with hundreds of ‘news’ channels saying the exact same thing. Besides criminally enriching big corporations, what were the strings attached? Who decided that? Would they be understood to push certain ‘narratives’ and censor others? I think we all know they did. And now we know why.

       I’ll take the discussion back to 2014 or so. I noticed all of a sudden AP, Reuters and Bloomberg started calling Davos attendees ‘elites’. They keep at it. Next thing you know central bankers were ‘elites’. Then all the top two party officials were ‘elites’. Media personalities even. I don’t think that was an organic coalescing around the term in such a short period.

31. ‘Corrupt Judge Protecting Corruption’: Musk Calls for Impeachment of Judge Who Blocked DOGE Access To Treasury

    by Jamie White
    February 9th, 2025 12:39 PM

    Elon Musk is calling for the impeachment of the federal judge who blocked DOGE from accessing the Treasury Department’s payment systems.

    U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer, an appointee of President Obama, issued an order Friday explicitly prohibiting special government employees and anyone from outside the department from getting access to the systems, which would include Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

    “A corrupt judge protecting corruption,” Musk wrote on X early Sunday. “He needs to be impeached NOW.”

    The judge’s ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by 19 Democratic state attorneys general who expressed concern over the access Musk and his team was getting to the Treasury’s internal information.

    New York Attorney General Letitia James, who filed the lawsuit, explained:

    President Trump does not have the power to give away Americans’ private information to anyone he chooses, and he cannot cut federal payments approved by Congress. Musk and DOGE have no authority to access Americans’ private information and some of our country’s most sensitive data.

    Vice President J.D. Vance sided with Musk on Sunday, claiming the judge has no authority to dictate how the president may exercise his power within the Executive Branch, which includes the Treasury Department.

    “If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” Vance wrote on X.

    Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Saturday said he would introduce legislation to stop “rogue judges” from stymieing Trump and DOGE’s agency audits.

    “I’m immediately introducing legislation next week to stop these rogue judges and allow Trump and DOGE to tell you where government is spending your money,” he announced.

    https://www.infowars.com/posts/corrupt-judge-protecting-corruption-musk-calls-for-impeachment-of-judge-who-blocked-doge-access-to-treasury

32. Western Lensman
    @WesternLensman

    CBS Democrat activist Margaret Brennan conducted an interview with a USAID employee whose identity is concealed.

    While legacy media is actively investigating and doxxing DOGE employees, they respect the USAID employee’s wish not to be publicly named.

    In this three-minute excerpt (edits are marked with white flashes), the employee claims:

    – An atmosphere of “massive insecurity”
    – A fear of being doxxed
    – Their personal data is compromised
    – DOGE actions have not been approved by President Trump and are the actions of a “few rogue individuals”
    – DOGE actions are dangerous and illegal
    – DOGE actions are not serving President Trump’s mandate
    – Elon is unilaterally making decisions that take help away from the poorest people in the world

    Many of these claims are clearly untrue on their face, yet no pushback from Brennan was offered.

    Legacy media is working to undermine DOGE efforts to cut government waste and expose fraud, because legacy media is part of the waste and fraud.

    The full transcript of this excerpt is provided below, and the full interview is linked in threaded post.

    —

    BRENNAN: Why in our conversation do you think you need to remain anonymous?

    EMPLOYEE: It has been a very hard, a very hard week. Personally. Professionally, as I said, I live in Washington, D.C. Many of my colleagues work in this field. Starting from January 21st, so the first day of the new administration, things started to go sideways very quickly. The atmosphere of fear that was in the USAID building, which we’re no longer in, the atmosphere of fear, in terms of not knowing who was in the building, not knowing what their motivations were, not knowing if our emails or channels were safe, not knowing how to interpret these executive orders right around DEIA or administration priorities.

    EMPLOYEE: All of that created an atmosphere of massive insecurity. And so people have, I think, lost the ability to know what’s true for what’s not. At this point, everyone is really scared.

    EMPLOYEE: And so, you know, I have a daughter, I have a family, like most Americans. And I want to be brave. I think it’s really important to share our personal stories at this time, but I am afraid, and I just don’t want to put them at any more risk than we have to.

    BRENNAN: When you say doxxed, there is fear of public sharing of your name and possibly targeting?

    EMPLOYEE: Absolutely.

    BRENNAN: By who?

    EMPLOYEE: Well, I mean, at this point, those members, including Elon Musk, have access to not just the data within the USAID world. Right. And the USAID system, which includes my personal email address, my Social Security number, my entire security file in that security file is every contact I’ve ever known, every country I’ve traveled to, every home address I’ve had.

    EMPLOYEE: So no matter which way I look at it, my information is entirely compromised and it’s in hands that I don’t know and don’t trust.

    EMPLOYEE: And yes, the government can be slow. It can be inefficient. It can cost taxpayers money. I do not doubt that at all. What is absolutely clear to me is that methods being used to achieve this so-called efficiency, not only do they not seem to be vetted and approved by the president of the United States or our Secretary, Marco Rubio.

    EMPLOYEE: They are entirely the actions of a rogue few individuals. They’re dangerous. They’re illegal. They’re cruel more than anything. And so, no, I don’t think this is serving American interests or answering to the president’s mandates.

    EMPLOYEE: And so to have this sort of, to be vilified by a billionaire who has decided that he’s unilaterally going to take help away from the poorest people in the world, and he’s doing it on behalf of the American people is particularly gross and horrifying. And I am angry. I am sad, I am devastated for my colleagues, for myself, for my family, and for the American people.

    0:52 / 3:17
    8:43 AM · Feb 9, 2025

    https://x.com/WesternLensman/status/1888584465288499372

    1. ‘And so to have this sort of, to be vilified by a billionaire who has decided that he’s unilaterally going to take help away from the poorest people in the world, and he’s doing it on behalf of the American people is particularly gross and horrifying. And I am angry. I am sad, I am devastated for my colleagues, for myself, for my family, and for the American people’

       Yer a bunch of thieving perverts employee. And you overthrow democratically elected guberments. You used hundreds of million$ of our money to bring in illegals, for years, who we now have to track down and kick their sorry a$$e$ out of the country. Some body deport this whiny b$tch to gitmo!

       1. +1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 x 7 x 8 x 9 x10

          1. The factorial of 10, denoted as 10!, is calculated by multiplying all positive integers from 1 to 10:

             10! = 10 × 9 × 8 × 7 × 6 × 5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1 = 3,628,800

             Therefore, 10! equals 3,628,800.

             1. +1!

             2. Maff be hard!

    2. take help away from the poorest people in the world

       We want to know how much was skimmed and by whom. Nobody wants your email address.

    3. EMPLOYEE: So no matter which way I look at it, my information is entirely compromised and it’s in hands that I don’t know and don’t trust.

       Let’s take a walk down memory lane, shall we? A few years back Chinese hackers made of with 25 million FedGov employees personal data thanks to security being entrusted to a minority set-aside company that wasn’t up to the task. I’m guessing EMPLOYEE’s data is far safer with Elon Musk’s DOGE geeks than with the shady companies “safeguarding” their data under previous Democrat and RINO administrations.

       https://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-25-million-affected-opm-hack-sources/story?id=32332731

    4. The past three weeks, all that has been revealed, this massive slush pile of U.S. taxpayer money. Disgraceful

       1. That was just one agency.

33. I saw the Last Waltz in a movie theater when I was as stoned kid.

    Then I watched it the other night in HD with a decent Bose sound system while I was as straight as an arrow.

    It looked and sounded better the other night.

    Eric Clapton The Last Waltz – Further on up the Road –

    https://youtu.be/78gR3Dlj7l0?si=TszAnRif3vFLqjyf

34. Are you noticing housing affordability improvements in your area?

    1. Business Insider
       11 US cities where home prices are falling the most
       Jenny McGrath Feb 8, 2025, 5:01 AM PT
       San Francisco, California
       Carmen Martínez Torrón/Getty Images

       The median home price in December 2024 was $402,502, down from $410,000 in 2023, per Realtor.com.

       Several big US cities saw home prices drop last month compared to the same time the year before.
       San Francisco saw the biggest decline — home prices fell by 10.9% year-over-year to $889,500.
       …
       https://www.businessinsider.com/us-cities-home-prices-falling-2025-2

35. Sen. Mike Lee floats former Rep. Ron Paul for Federal Reserve chairman, Musk says ‘amazing’ idea

    Musk wrote on X it would be a ‘good idea’ if DOGE allowed former GOP Rep. Ron Paul run a ‘Federal Reserve audit team’

    Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, floated former GOP Rep. Ron Paul for Federal Reserve chairman and billionaire Elon Musk, who is leading the Department of Government Efficiency called the idea “amazing.”

    “Raise your hand if you’d like to see @RonPaul as Federal Reserve chairman,” Lee wrote about Paul, 89, whose signature issue became calling for a full audit of the Federal Reserve . He was also a vocal opponent of the Iraq War before it began.

    https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/sen-mike-lee-floats-former-rep-ron-paul-federal-reserve-chairman-musk-says

36. Trump Says He’ll Impose 25 Percent Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum on Monday

    President Donald Trump said Sunday that he will announce on Monday new 25 percent tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into the United States.

    “Any steel coming into the United States is going to have a 25 percent tariff,” he told reporters Sunday on Air Force One as he flew from Florida to New Orleans to attend the Super Bowl. When asked about aluminum, he told reporters, “aluminum, too” will be subject to the trade penalties.

    Trump on Sunday offered no details about the aluminum or steel tariffs. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said that the new tariffs would come on top of the existing duties on steel and aluminum.

    Trump also told reporters that he would soon announce “reciprocal tariffs” on Tuesday or Wednesday, meaning that the United States could impose duties on products from countries that have placed tariffs on U.S. goods.

    “If they are charging us 130 percent and we’re charging them nothing, it’s not going to stay that way,” he told reporters.

    Last week, Trump elaborated on the reciprocal tariffs during comments at the White House alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.

    “Where a country … charges us so much, and we do the same,” he said. “I think that’s the only fair way to do it. That way, nobody’s hurt.”

    According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the European Union levies as much as 50 percent tariffs on motorcycles and 10 percent on automobiles, while India places 60 percent duties on U.S. cars and hefty tariffs on agricultural products.

    During the campaign, Trump often said that he would place tariffs on a variety of goods and countries, sometimes even suggesting that the United States could abolish the income tax in favor of tariffs.

    https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/trump-announces-he-will-impose-25-percent-tariffs-on-steel-and-aluminum-tariffs-soon-5807010

37. ‘Especially these days, meals are expensive, gas is expensive, everything is expensive.’

    Yet the Fed keeps printing like there’s no tomorrow.

38. Active inventory grew 20.9 % for single-family homes and 54.9 % for condos compared with January 2024.

    Where’s all the pent-up demand that NAR dissemblers said was waiting on the sidelines for more inventory to appear?

39. “Friday morning, the Central Panhandle Association of Realtors (CPAR) presented its real estate market findings from 2024 and its outlook for 2025.

    Soon the Panhandler realtors will be just panhandlers.

40. Real estate agents say there was a trend happening where sellers were setting their original listing price unrealistically high in 2024 after seeing record-breaking price tags in prior years.

    Scamdemic-era FOMO FBs are going to be cautionary tales for a generation to come.

41. “TV celebrity contractor Mike Holmes has posted a public statement on Facebook about the importance of electrical safety and investigating contractors which may have done unsafe work.

    Until complicit, incompetent, and criminally negligent inspectors are held personally liable for financial damages for signing off on substandard work, nothing is going to change.

42. “‘Because of the lack of supply, there’s an element of panic and we’re seeing a huge amount of international professionals living here bidding on five or six properties at the same time,’ Farrell said. ‘

    An “Ireland for the Irish” movement is coming, globalist vermin.

43. Morrell and Koren buyer’s advocate Matthew Cleverdon, who bought the home on behalf of a client, declined to discuss the price.

    There’s no such thing as a “buyer’s advocate.” Both realtors in the transaction have exactly the same objective: to make the buyer pay the maximum amount so they’re realize higher commissions.

44. ‘Now she’s walking away from a half-built replacement, putting it up for sale after more than four years of battles with an insurance company and a contractor. ‘It’s been hell, absolute hell, and I have been spending money like it’s water,’ said Wold, a 51-year-old sales director for a technology company in Fremont. ‘I wish to God I didn’t start building’

    Insurance doesn’t work if they have to pay out Ana.

45. ‘Fewer condos sold above the asking price, dropping to 10 % of transactions from 17 % in January 2024’

    Oh dear…

46. ‘Every property that earned a spot in 2024’s top five most expensive home sales was bought for less than the original listing price’

    5 million $ shacks are a discretionary speculative purchase.

47. ‘We were furious, very angry. It’s our home, it’s where our kids sleep…We trusted AGM to do it right and leave the home safe’

    Those reality TV shows are fake Eric.

    1. And their viewers are cretins.

48. ‘A French Mediterranean-inspired Brighton house changed hands for a massive $8.5m at auction yesterday, a sum $1m lower than its last sale just 12 months ago. The five-bedroom pad at 36 Dawson Ave features a sauna, home cinema, games and billiards room with a built-in bar and rooftop terrace equipped with a hot tub spa and barbecue kitchen’

    It was cheaper than renting Matt.

49. Stupid realtor tricks can’t conceal a cratering housing market.

    https://x.com/ryanstellar/status/1888714795752530025

50. BWHAHAAHAAHAAA! I’m guessing every Trump supporter in attendance, regardless of which team they backed, booed this overrated libtard harpy who felt the need to tell us how to vote.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/nfl/article-14378957/Taylor-Swift-booed-fans-Super-Bowl-Travis-Kelce-Chiefs.html

    1. Watch & learn, blackmailed celebrities – your endorsement of globalist stooges might come at a cost.

       https://x.com/saras76/status/1888743092792271166

51. Seethe harder, globalists.

    https://x.com/saras76/status/1888753822606258211

    1. Those “He Gets Us” ads are not new. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen them during previous Soup Bowls

52. A real audit of the criminal private banking cartel called the Fed would be the crowning achievement of a Trump 2.0 presidency.

    https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1888552724100256225

53. Fewer impaired drivers on the road is a good thing. Buh-bye, Jorge.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YItdPG4xIE

54. Garth Hudson of The Band ABSOLUTELY MESMERIZES THE AUDIENCE –

    Songs of The Band

    Backstage Music

    11 years ago

    Produced and Filmed April 19, 2013, by Thom Pollard of Eyes Open Productions, LLC. Songs of The Band – featuring Garth Hudson and Jimmy Vivino. The band played two sets at the Tarrytown Music Hall in Tarrytown, NY. To open the second set, Garth sat at the ivories and improvised. Uploaded on Garth’s 76th birthday…he hasn’t lost his touch. ©2013.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGs34RcdDz8

    5:40.

55. Does it seem like a market correction may be underway?

    1. Markets are correcting. It’s time to consider contrarian investing.
       3 min read
       10 Feb 2025, 10:20 AM IST
       Joydeep Sen
       Contrarian investing starts with identifying market trends or sentiments and looking for discrepancies between market sentiment and fundamentals.

       A correction was due any which way, as valuations were stretched.
       A correction was due any which way, as valuations were stretched.
       Gift this article

       Warren Buffett famously said: “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.” If you were bullish in September 2024, there is no reason to be bearish now just because of the correction.

       A correction was due any which way, as valuations were stretched. Whichever parameter you take for valuation—price-to-earnings ratio (PE), price-to-book value ratio or market capitalization to gross domestic product (GDP)—were overvalued.
       …
       https://www.livemint.com/money/personal-finance/stock-markets-investing-strategies-value-investing-contrarian-investing-market-correction-stock-picks/

56. While you slept last night, a realtor was lying to someone.

57. Heckova job, RBA.

    https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/renting/failing-twothirds-of-australian-retired-renters-live-in-poverty/news-story/48870eab61388ee9da5885cd1f4511dc

58. So good to have the mean tweets back. Globalist scum media spin is that Taylor Swift was booed at the Superbowl by Philadelphia Eagles fans – I guarantee you every Trump supporter in the stadium, regardless of team, was booing this skank after she endorsed Kamala Harris, albeit probably under duress from her globalist handlers.

    https://x.com/saras76/status/1888805639012614164

    1. “…albeit probably under duress from her globalist handlers.”

       I had that thought too, but ultimately concluded that it is a mistake for any celebrity to issue endorsements of political candidates.

       1. Given the crazy amounts of money she’s “made” (she s allegedly worth over a billion), she is likely beholden to some very powerful people.

          1. I believe Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez are running neck to neck in the net worth race, both north of $1B anyway. I can’t imagine having that much wealth and still being owned.

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