[flagged]
You keep using majority as emphasis, but that's incorrect. Trump only got 49.8% of the vote. The majority of America voters did not vote for him.
DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds
191–200 of 317 posts
Re: DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People like to pretend the intelligence agencies don't operate this way today Who? How do you think soft power works? > how this has become turned inward on the USA itself The CIA isn’t conducting political campaigns at home. To the extent we have intelligence operations running amok in our bureaucracy, it’s DOGE. Honestly, this edginess-seeking behaviour reminds me of students in New York and San Francisco convinc…
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-... ...oops, the law preventing that was amended under obama, to allow it. Drat. (cf. the original Smith-Mundt act preventing it, and the Modernization Act of 2012 allowing it again. The original, of course, created because law makers were terrified of what would happen if this was turned inward.)
[deleted]
Re: DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People like to pretend the intelligence agencies don't operate this way today Who? How do you think soft power works? > how this has become turned inward on the USA itself The CIA isn’t conducting political campaigns at home. To the extent we have intelligence operations running amok in our bureaucracy, it’s DOGE. Honestly, this edginess-seeking behaviour reminds me of students in New York and San Francisco convinc…
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-... ...oops, the law preventing that was amended under obama, to allow it. Drat. (cf. the original Smith-Mundt act preventing it, and the Modernization Act of 2012 allowing it again. The original, of course, created because law makers were terrified of what would happen if this was turned inward.)
Did you know we also have NPR and PBS? A literal public-TV censorship board?
Also, we’re talking about the CIA. Your conspiracy theory has them waiting for a law to be repealed before acting? Do you think a single DOGE bro hired a lawyer before acting?
> because law makers were terrified of what would happen if this was turned inward
What nonsense. Where did you read this? We had a massive and celebrated domestic propaganda board during the Great Depression and WWII.
Re: DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think maybe the user is implying that a civil war will break out. I started reading about the original American Civil War after recent events. The lead up to that was protracted. As long as some states begin assembling militias now and unify, it's probable they will be able to mount an attack against the Federal government as happened back then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_events_leading_to_...
> maybe the user is implying that a civil war will break out I’m not. Short of a decapitation strike in which MAGA and Musk are taken out in a night of long knives, which would itself be more destabilising to our republic than anything they’ve done, there is little to play for a military conflict à la the Civil War in a nuclear state. If we’re going to see a civil war, it wouldn’t be states vs U.S. but some compartme…
I see. My opinion is that nuclear weapons are more or less useless in a modern conflict, as has been observed in the Russia-Ukraine war with endless Russian sabre-rattling. The collateral damage from nuclear weapons makes their usage suicidal, and in the case of the US, states breaking away from the Federal government would also inherit a nuclear arsenal -- leading to a stalemate.
The Russia-Ukraine war has convinced me that artificial intelligence driven drone warfare has rendered nuclear warfare obsolete. The drones act as a force multiplier which can mass target the enemy with little collateral damage.
Re: DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
The CIA has done a ton of bad shit - especially in other countries - over the past 50 years, but that’s a completely separate matter from a “deep state” controlling things and trying to prevent Trump’s election.
OK, well I was choosing one of you "movie plot" cases to show you that the CIA does not care if it runs movie plot programmes. The mechanism of anti-trump coordination has yet really to be briefed out, and wikiepedia will be dragged kicking and screaming before there's an article on it. Give it a decade, perhaps. For now, if you want examples here's the atlantic council (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Cou…
A lot of rightwing stuff that circulates is disinformation -- there are plenty of examples of it. Trump is an inveterate liar about almost everything (this is easily fact-checked), and his followers have adopted the same strategy (lies are powerful because they are usually more shocking and travel faster than a boring fact-check).
Not to say that other politicians don't lie or distort the truth, but Trump has taken this to a whole other level.
Re: DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds
#196And ... there we go - flagged by Musk's tech bros again. HN is starting to feel like X -- I've deleted my X account, and might have to do the same here. I've now switched my primary HN link from the home page to /active, where, thankfully, flagged posts still show up.
It's fascinating to watch the US Federal government dismantled by a tech giant while all of FAANG complies in advance. Thousands of software developers affected with Federal layoffs and DOGE defunding and yet it's not appropriate for discussion on HN.
I believe that the USA is now in the grips of a fascist government. Resistance is minimal and focused on fixing what the administration has broken last week or last month, and may take years to have any impact through courts, legislation, and direct action. The Federal government as we knew it, is gone. Power has been consolidated into the executive branch and a blue wave in 2026 will be too late. Congress is being stripped of its power and the judicial branch has been an enabler of unchecked executive power for a decade or more.
I recognize that this is a fringe belief.
All we can do now is help each other and resist as much as possible.
Re: DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-... ...oops, the law preventing that was amended under obama, to allow it. Drat. (cf. the original Smith-Mundt act preventing it, and the Modernization Act of 2012 allowing it again. The original, of course, created because law makers were terrified of what would happen if this was turned inward.)
Did you know we also have NPR and PBS? A literal public-TV censorship board? Also, we’re talking about the CIA. Your conspiracy theory has them waiting for a law to be repealed before acting? Do you think a single DOGE bro hired a lawyer before acting? > because law makers were terrified of what would happen if this was turned inward What nonsense. Where did you read this? We had a massive and celebrated domestic pro…
You can just read the wikipedia on it,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act#Congre...
And note the FBI's concerns there at the end too. This isnt about NPR. It's about The State Department and the intelligence services which were localised under the department at the time.
Let's just be very simple about this though. We have in 2012 a repeal of a law which existed to ban the state department ("the war office" in old-speak) from propagandizing US citizens. And as the 2010s progress, gov. officials demanding social media companies censor americans. We have NGOs created with USAID and DARPA funding to enable mass censorship and profiling. And we have, during the pandemic, the deployment of all of this machinery at once.
Now, this is the indisputable, publicly obvious, everyone-can-see it layer. Now imagine one layer deeper: how does this actually play out in terms of executive action?
I am, fyi, not right wing; and not pro-trump.
Re: DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
The checks and balances assumed the entire country didn't vote the exact same people into majorities in all 3 branches
Its even worse than the same party having a majority everywhere. Trump's cult-like pull and the associated threat of the world's richest man (who still talks about the dangers of the global elites with no sense of irony) bankrolling a primary against anyone who steps out of line have effectively erased the congress as an independent branch entirely. There are Republicans in the house and senate and even Trump's own a…
> who still talks about the dangers of the global elites with no sense of irony
As with "DEI mayor", "urban youth", "rootless cosmopolitans", etc., it's a euphemism.
Re: DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
These weren't no-votes; they aren't counted in the stat. 49.80% for Trump, 48.32% for Harris, 1.89% for others (Stein, Kennedy, etc.).
My point is: If one doesn't vote, it's an implicit vote for the winner. Not voting means you're saying "I am supportive of whoever wins" So including those, most presidential elections really aren't that close.
No, it's not.
Re: DOGE staffer is trying to reroute FEMA funds
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trump won the popular vote with 49.8% of votes cast, let’s stop pretending the entire country gave him the mandate to do whatever he wants.
An eligible voter who doesn't vote is effectively a vote for the winner, so a majority was at least complicit.
Just because you keep repeating this doesn't make it true.