News: Politics

Release in July 2024, this detailed report goes over the threats against the United States as well as the strategic readiness to reply to those threats. This is the most detailed non-classified information available and is a very interesting and somewhat frightening report.It starts out with this summary info:The threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945 and include the potential for near-term major war. The United States last fought a global conflict during World War II, which ended nearly 80 years ago. The nation was last prepared for such a fight during the Cold War, which ended 35 years ago. It is not prepared today.China and Russia are major powers that seek to undermine U.S. influence. The 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS) recognizes these nations as the top threats to the United States and declares China to be the “pacing challenge,” based on the strength of its military and economy and its intent to exert dominance regionally and globally.The Commission finds that, in many ways, China is outpacing the United States and has largely negated the U.S. military advantage in the Western Pacific through two decades of focused military investment. Without significant change by the United States, the balance of power will continue to shift in China’s favor. China’s overall annual spending on defense is estimated at as much as $711 billion, 2 and the Chinese government in March 2024 announced an increase in annual defense spending of 7.2 ...

Carlin said: “Given how frantic they are... there are things in those records that are going to make real trouble. I’m talking about prison time. It reinforces the fact that they know they’re in real trouble if these things are released—particularly if they’re released soon.”Ex-National Archivist Thinks Trump Is Hiding His Records to Avoid ‘Prison Time’

“This is real, this is serious and it’s frightening,” said Brian Clardy, a Murray State University history professor. “We must build a democratic resistance that amounts to a counter-fascist coup — In short, we must all become ‘antifa,’ or antifascists,” said John Hennen, a Morehead State University history professor emeritus.Two Kentucky historians agree the GOP is steering the US straight toward authoritarianism

A LOT happened in 2021! Here's a large selection of pictures documenting the year. https://apnews.com/article/2021-top-photos-associated-press-d0b894e16a0f7759745c7888331c314b

As scientists and concerned citizens, we applaud the recent trend towards legislation that requires the prominent placing of warnings on products that present hazards to the general public. Yet we must also offer the cautionary thought that such warnings, however well-intentioned, merely scratch the surface of what is really necessary in this important area. This is especially true in light of the findings of 20th century physics.     We are therefore proposing that, as responsible scientists, we join together in an intensive push for new laws that will mandate the conspicuous placement of suitably informative warnings on the packaging of every product offered for sale in the United States of America. Our suggested list of warnings appears below.   WARNING: This Product Warps Space and Time in Its Vicinity.   WARNING: This Product Attracts Every Other Piece of Matter in the Universe, Including the Products of Other Manufacturers, with a Force Proportional to the Product of the Masses and Inversely Proportional to the Distance Between Them.   CAUTION: The Mass of This Product Contains the Energy Equivalent of 85 Million Tons of TNT per Net Ounce of Weight.   HANDLE WITH EXTREME CARE: This Product Contains Minute Electrically Charged Particles Moving at Velocities in Excess of Five Hundred Million Miles Per Hour.   CONSUMER NOTICE: Because of the "Uncertainty Principle," It Is Impossible for the Consumer to Find Out at the Same Time Both Precisely Where This Product Is and How Fast It Is Moving.   ADVISORY: There is an Extremely Small but Nonzero Chance That, Through a Process Know as "Tunneling," This ...

Times.  Change.  Workers have been told for 20 years that they need to adapt their skillsets or die, and now it's time for managers to do the same.  Have you not realized that your under-40 employees have been socializing "not in person" as often as in-person for the last few decades?  (Especially if you're the type who complains that "these kids won't get off their phones!")  It's 100% possible to have complex, meaningful interactions without being in the same room, and it has been for years.  "Team chat rooms" are much more conducive to a healthy team environment, where you can pay attention or not depending on how many balls you have in the air at once, especially when compared to the office bore who wanders from office to office to find a victim to shoot the shit with.  Want to have a quick chat about issue X?  Fire up the voice chat -- and then share your screen to show your buddy what your issue is.  Need help from more than one person?  Now you don't have to try to cram three people into a Smurf-sized cubicle and crane your neck to get input from your colleagues.  Especially after lunch, and nobody's brushed their teeth.  Walking a new hire through a procedure?  Record your meeting, and they can re-watch it.Managers -- *good* managers -- are *thrilled* at the possibilities and flexibility that working from home is bringing to their productivity.  I live in Austin, and my commute was 45 ...

They say it’s a war already well under way. That means the start of any ‘conventional’ conflict will be murky and confused. And, even once the shooting starts, sowing doubt and disbelief will be a significant weapon in its arsenal.China already ‘engaging in irregular war’ with US in the ‘grey zone’It's war, Jim, but not as we know it. Not as we know it.

One possible reason why Work From Home is okay now, will not affect h-1b hiring plans. Is because hiring has always been about nationality. Specifically don’t hire Americans, instead hire compliant foreign workers, that are tied to the job.Facebook (in Facebook vs DOJ) admits it finds 30x more local STEM/IT workers than it can hire. That indictment is online. If you have any evidence that you can present to the DOJ that refutes this information (again provided to the DOJ, from Facebook, under threat of Federal obstruction of justice charges). Then you should provide that information to the DOJ, immediately. This indictment has been on the books for 5 months (and it was entered post election, so it wasn’t a political stunt). Facebook has yet to issue a rebuttal or counter claim.I suspect Facebook will hope that Biden will (in exchange for continued silencing of conservative voices) try to drop the case quietly or settle for fraction of its value. And the value of this case (based on prior, similar cases) is 100,000$ per count, this indictment has 2600+ counts.We have to realize that Facebook intentionally protected foreign workers from local competition. And that wasn’t 1 or 2, better qualified local candidates per foreign worker (by Facebook’s own admission in the DOJ indictment), it was 30x more better qualified local candidates than foreign workers.Big Tech is not actually having any trouble finding local candidates for their STEM/IT positions. And that is because everyone wants to work for a big stable ...

Net job loss in Trump's term, the first President in 80 years to have created no jobs at all despite $1.7T in tax breaks to stimulate the economy >80% of which went to the very wealthy and corporations. Net drop in quarterly GDP. Betrayed our Kurdish allies in Syria, ensuring victory for the Assad regime and securing it within the Russian sphere of influence.Betrayed the Palestinian Authority and abandoned any pretense at being an honest broker in peace negotiations. Backed out of the Paris Climate Accord, the TPP, The Open Skies Treaty, the Iran Nuclear Arms Control Agreement,Installed a foreign agent as his National Security Advisor and pardoned him before he was sentenced. Pardoned all of his crooked campaign staffers and advisors including that rat Roger Stone.Downplayed Covid 19 as just the flu, said it would go away when the weather got warmer, refused to wear a mask, held rallies that became super-spreader events, resulting in 389,000 deaths due to Covid 19 with approximately 4k more dying every day now.Tried to take credit for a vaccine that was created by a company that didn't participate in his Operation Warp Speed, hasn't been able to deliver even half of the number of doses he promised.Told more lies than any past POTUS by an order of magnitude, including the Big Lie that he won the election, impeached twice, incited a seditious mob that attacked the US Capitol and threatened to lynch his own VP and Congressional leadershipNever produced a health care plan, the additional 10% middle class tax ...

Two of the FCC commisioners ( Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel ) were fiercely against the rollback of Net Neutrality regulations, they understood how dangerous this rollback is to the open Internet: [Jump to Rosenworcel's Statement]Commissioner Clyburn's statement:I dissent. I dissent from this fiercely-spun, legally-lightweight, consumer-harming, corporate-enabling Destroying Internet Freedom Order.I dissent, because I am among the millions who is outraged. Outraged, because the FCC pulls its own teeth, abdicating responsibility to protect the nation’s broadband consumers. Why are we witnessing such an unprecedented groundswell of public support, for keeping the 2015 net neutrality protections in place? Because the public can plainly see, that a soon-to-be-toothless FCC, is handing the keys to the Internet – the Internet, one of the most remarkable, empowering, enabling inventions of our lifetime – over to a handful of multi-billion dollar corporations. And if past is prologue, those very same broadband internet service providers, that the majority says you should trust to do right by you, will put profits and shareholder returns above, what is best for you.Each of us raised our right hands when we were sworn in as FCC Commissioners, took an oath and promised to uphold our duties and responsibilities ‘to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination… a rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges.’ Today the FCC majority officially abandons that pledge and millions have taken note.I do not believe ...