Quote :

"RFK Jr refuses to say if he would vaccinate his children today for measles, then adds, "I don't think people should take medical advice from me.""

I agree with him on that.

5/14/2025 1:54:19 PM

Noem needs a new plane too

5/14/2025 8:34:44 PM

might I suggest something from Boeing?

5/14/2025 11:21:50 PM

Quote :

" As soon as he tries to actually do the right thing in terms of foreign policy, or otherwise speak up against what foreign policy is being run out of the Oval Office, he is gone. "

You would think he would be looking for the best off-ramp available and then lay low. Who would want to be associated with this? And it always takes a few moments for me to re-orient to reality. There actually are a lot of future timelines where working in this administration gives you political advantage in the conservative movement. Also I imagine if you break too hard with Trump on any issue of significance, MAGA cult psychos will stalk you for the rest of your life.

If I’m Rubio, I’m colluding with doctors to fake some kind of health diagnosis that requires me to resign and stay at home for a couple years. Let it blow over?

5/15/2025 8:19:17 AM

"I love the poorly educated!"

5/15/2025 8:47:10 AM

This is probably bad

https://politicalwire.com/2025/05/20/kristi-noem-doesnt-know-what-habeus-corpus-is/

5/20/2025 3:30:21 PM

Well, it's certainly stupid. But no surprise there.

5/20/2025 6:53:29 PM

With the revelation that Elon Musk took Stephen Miller’s wife as a concubine, I only see two outcomes. He shows up Monday morning and keeps sucking dick like he has for the past 4 months or he finally snaps, has a “Falling Down” epiphany and kills everyone in the Whitehouse. The former will force me to retract all admiration I expressed for him, the latter ……….?

5/30/2025 8:52:08 PM

^
Huh I have not seen any musk concubine stories

5/30/2025 10:31:36 PM

https://www.thedailybeast.com/dems-taunt-stephen-miller-over-wife-leaving-him-for-musk/

Concubine is embellished, but give it time.

5/31/2025 7:09:04 AM

Quote :

" COLLINS: Tulsi Gabbard testified in March that the intelligence community said Iran wasn't building a nuclear weapon TRUMP: I don't care what she said "

There’s a video here
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lrstjhuzck22

Would be funny if it wasn’t deadly incompetence

6/17/2025 1:19:00 PM

Still kinda funny.

6/17/2025 5:35:57 PM

Not sure the best place for this but wtf
https://gizmodo.com/silicon-valley-execs-join-the-army-as-officers-but-wont-have-to-attend-boot-camp-2000617223

6/18/2025 10:17:45 AM

Quote :

"At 5:30 a.m. on June 10, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard tweeted a cryptic, three-minute video warning that “political elite and warmongers” are “carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers” — and that the world is “on the brink of nuclear annihilation.” Trump saw the unauthorized video and became incensed, complaining to associates at the White House that she had spoken out of turn, according to three people familiar with the episode — two of them inside the administration and all granted anonymity to describe sensitive dynamics."

6/18/2025 10:42:40 AM

^^
The idea started under Biden. There are no good tech bros anymore though— billionairism has corroded them all

We need to really end the existence of billionaires

6/18/2025 2:16:42 PM

Quote :

" Trump is antagonizing foreign creditors when the US needs them most, threatening the dollar's reign. https://bloom.bg/4kRWLIc "

decades of damage from this

6/18/2025 6:53:49 PM

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lrvfs5h5df2h

It’s wild watching evil villainous people on the level we read about from the nazis parade themselves around in our government

6/19/2025 12:10:25 PM

https://mdavis19881.substack.com/p/watch-sen-tammy-duckworth-rips-into

6/19/2025 1:02:33 PM

Quote :

"Not sure the best place for this but wtf https://gizmodo.com/silicon-valley-execs-join-the-army-as-officers-but-wont-have-to-attend-boot-camp-2000617223"

The most ironic part about all of this is that this group of frauds masquerading as "conservatives", who apparently lament the loss of societal values, have no respect whatsoever for our traditions, our institutions, or frankly, for anything at all.

There's this clip where Senator Slotkin questions Hegseth about his predecessor's alleging that Trump asked for protestors to be shot, and his response was something along the lines of "I don't know what books you've been reading, you shouldn't trust any, [pause] except the Bible". What?

[Edited on June 19, 2025 at 11:51 PM. Reason : commas]

6/19/2025 11:49:58 PM

Yes, there's a clip -- in a link two posts above yours.

6/20/2025 6:48:08 AM

OK

6/20/2025 3:34:39 PM

^^^ the Bible tells me they are literal demons walking among us

don't ask what verse or I'll have you sent to a gulag in central America

6/21/2025 9:29:52 AM

https://www.npr.org/2025/08/09/nx-s1-5497226/women-pastor-pete-hegseth-vote

Quote :

"Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reposted and praised a video interview of a self-described Christian nationalist pastor whose church doesn't believe women should be allowed to vote. Doug Wilson, senior pastor of Christ Church in Idaho, said during the interview with CNN that, "Women are the kind of people that people come out of." .. In the CNN interview, Wilson also defended previous comments where he had said there was mutual affection between slaves and their masters. He also said that sodomy should be recriminalized. The Supreme Court invalidated sodomy laws in 2003. In his repost of the interview on the platform X, Hegseth added, "All of Christ for All of Life.""

8/11/2025 9:36:48 AM

Quote :

"Women are the kind of people that people come out of."

Can't argue with that. But I think his big mistake here is admitting that women are people.

8/11/2025 3:05:39 PM

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bls-nominee-made-claim-that-no-sensible-economist-would-use-and-thats-one-of-the-kinder-comments-789b91e5

Regarding Trump’s BLS nominee, holy shit look at these drags by other “free market” economists:

Quote :

" Jessica Riedl, a former Heritage Foundation research fellow now at the conservative Manhattan Institute, said articles and online posts by Antoni “are probably the most error-filled of any think tank economist right now.” Jeremy Horpedahl of the libertarian Cato Institute said Antoni “either massively misunderstands labor market data, or he is willing to lie repeatedly about after being corrected by dozens of economists.” Stan Veuger of the American Enterprise Institute, often described as a center-right think tank, called Trump’s BLS pick “utterly unqualified and as partisan as it gets.”"

When the guy at American Enterprise Institute calls a fellow traveler (in my eyes) a partisan hack? We’re fucked.

8/13/2025 6:28:06 AM

Quote :

" He didn’t know about the the CDC decision on COVID shots until the announcement, even though he led division on vaccination & respiratory disease He kept asking to see the justifying evidence, or hear from experts who supported the move RFK’s team kept saying no https://www.thebulwark.com/p/kennedy-rfk-jr-cdc-purge-anti-vaccination "

This is a crazy story. Career experts being disallowed from seeing policy data and changes.

9/1/2025 10:59:50 AM

But you see, they disagree with the leader, so that's not going to do.

9/1/2025 11:41:30 AM

Curious about theDuke866's opinion/guess on Military's feelings towards the Hegseth/Trump lectures to military leaders


[Edited on September 30, 2025 at 4:00 PM. Reason : R]

9/30/2025 3:59:08 PM

-I think Hegseth is unqualified to be SecDef and I still take issue with a variety of other things about him

-I think that calling every flag officer from around the globe, underway on ships, from combat zones, Reserve officers called in from their day jobs, etc, all on short notice, to all be in one place, for this was absurd

-Trump's remarks, as usual, had no redeeming qualities. It is absolutely baffling to me that this fucking imbecile is POTUS, and that ~45% of the country is STILL on board with it.

_____________________________________

I think that 90% of what Hegseth put forth today was, in and of itself, good stuff and moves in the right direction. Or at least concepts of a plan in the right direction. Whether or not it will be implemented competently, effectively, and in a positive/beneficial way, who knows? ...and there are a few things in there that raise eyebrows or are even outright bad.

Honestly, a lot of it sounds like making the rest of DoD a lot more like the Marine Corps.

Basically, I'm concerned about a few things, and I think Hegseth and most especially Trump, could find a way to fuck up an anvil with a rubber mallet, and I hope that the 10% I'm concerned about doesn't turn into anything really bad, but I'm by far net positive on what I heard today.


[Edited on September 30, 2025 at 10:14 PM. Reason : ]

9/30/2025 10:09:51 PM

Without going into a bulleted list point by point and just speaking generally, I am guessing you liked stuff like the standards and dudes not wearing dresses, and disliked stuff like the military getting training done in cities?

9/30/2025 10:37:56 PM

^^thanks

9/30/2025 10:48:35 PM

It strikes me as a pretext of a sizable cut in military budget, with the secondary intent of pushing out African Americans

9/30/2025 10:57:50 PM

Generally…

Good:

setting high standards and demanding adherence to them

Focus on combat readiness

Support personnel also need to be ready for combat at some level (the “every Marine a rifleman” applied at least somewhat to everyone

Dramatically cutting annual training. Holy shit, this stuff is absurd. Tobacco cessation training every year even though I have never been a tobacco user? Endless cyber security online training? No raping and no DUI training? Dude I fucking get it. I never needed to be told, and if I did, I got it 20 iterations ago. And if I hadn’t, one more isn’t gonna make it click. The hours spent on all this stuff is fucking crazy. Especially when it was a struggle to get a spot to do my annual rifle/pistol qualification, even in the USMC (and he wants to refocus on this sort of training)

More hardcore boot camps

Color blind, gender neutral promotion process based solely on merit, focusing on more rapidly advancing top performers and more rapidly eliminating poor performers

Ditching zero defect mentality, to include at a systemic level in terms of how long minor infractions are kept in your file

Resisting risk aversion. This was one that I thought was absolutely maddening. It’s part of why I got out.

Eliminating identity months, “DEI offices”, gender ideology accommodations
(*I haven’t seen much of this stuff anyway, and I can see Hegseth calling anything he doesn’t like “DEI”)

10/1/2025 12:16:05 AM

Questionable:

PT required every day. Sounds great, but I don’t think it’s realistically viable in many units.

No beards except special operations. I think that maybe we have gotten too permissive with holding this standard (if it needs to be a standard to begin with, outside of areas where gas/oxygen mask fitment is important…which is questionable ), but what he’s talking about doing is going to force people out over razor bumps or bona fide religious beliefs.

Putting hands on recruits in boot camp. I don’t know, it depends on the details, but i think I see more downside than upside here, despite generally being in favor of hardcore recruit training

Standards review of schoolhouses/PmE: while I listed standards more broadly under positives, I’m concerned they might give this the “national parks treatment” and scrub things ideologically. I don’t want any MAGA thought policing.

Similar thoughts on “frivolous IG complaints” and reviewing definitions of toxic leadership and hazing. I can see that going awry, and I haven’t really seen a bunch of overly soft-batch policing of this anyway.

Loosening ROEs. While I am very against overly restrictive ROEs, my observation of the GWOT is that it was not Vietnam. I haven’t seen much problem in this direction. I have seen a few I thought were overly permissive. I can see this admin erring in further in that direction.


Clearly bad:
No anonymous IG complaints
No climate change/green initiatives

[Edited on October 1, 2025 at 12:35 AM. Reason : ]

10/1/2025 12:25:26 AM

Wow, excellent posts. Thanks a ton for the insight

10/1/2025 12:30:53 AM

What they need to fix even worse are the acquisitions and budget processes

Also—and there are arguments for and against I suppose—but I think they should get rid of the “up or out” personnel management system. Not every great leader was the tip-top worker bee, and not every incredible worker bee is cut out for wants to be in charge.

The Brits take the other approach here. For us, we kick out great pilots/mechanics/gunfighters/etc because they can’t or don’t want to transition to leadership roles. In my opinion, if Rambo isn’t cut out to be a SgtMaj or Chuck Yeager hadn’t wanted to be a commander, why on earth would we fire them?

My dad was an insurance exec (after cutting hair for years. Weird career path, but that’s another story). He would tell you that he had personnel who were elite sales agents, but had no business being in charge of an agency…but he didn’t fire them! They were great in their role. Not would you expect one of your agency managers to be the top performer in sales. That’s not his job anymore.

10/1/2025 12:46:59 AM

if we can't learn from past generations what are we even doing



[Edited on October 1, 2025 at 12:53 AM. Reason : peterfred reporting for duty]

10/1/2025 12:52:03 AM

Yeah in DoD it’s required, though! You HAVE to keep promoting or you’re fired.

10/1/2025 12:53:23 AM

Quote :

"No beards except special operations. I think that maybe we have gotten too permissive with holding this standard (if it needs to be a standard to begin with, outside of areas where gas/oxygen mask fitment is important…which is questionable ), but what he’s talking about doing is going to force people out over razor bumps or bona fide religious beliefs."

That reminded me of a story I heard on NPR a couple months ago

https://americanhomefront.wunc.org/news/2025-08-18/as-the-military-tightens-its-shaving-policies-some-black-troops-worry-their-careers-are-in-danger

10/1/2025 11:28:01 AM

some of that Pseudofolliculitis barbae is no frigging joke

10/1/2025 12:07:03 PM

It will be interesting to see the projected attrition. It’s an open secret the military is partially a jobs program for people from small towns with no options and people with no direction, and this seems like it upends that. Have to imagine that has effects on those areas where young people who are too chubby or unatheltic now have nothing to do.

10/1/2025 12:39:06 PM

Most of them probably will end up getting disability. And complain about coloreds sucking the teet of government

10/1/2025 12:48:45 PM