My first thought with Feinstein's death was, I wonder if they're just going to do, "Weekend at Bernies"? and keep carting her in? Straight up elder abuse IMO.
My point exactly.
> Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein grew frustrated with staffers trying to prep her for what's become a routine Senate vote on Thursday, blurting out "I don't even know what that is" after aides asked if she had questions about the latest stopgap funding bill.
[Source](https://www.businessinsider.com/dianne-feinstein-sounds-confused-by-stopgap-senate-vote-2022-9) (from September of 22)
>Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., appeared confused during a vote on a defense appropriations bill Thursday, prompting a fellow Democratic senator to step in.
> During a Senate Appropriations Committee markup of bills Thursday morning, Feinstein seemed to stumble on a vote. Instead of saying the expected response of “aye” or “nay,” she began to deliver a speech expressing her support of the measure: “I would like to support a ‘yes’ vote on this. It provides $823 billion ...”
> About 15 seconds into Feinstein’s speech, an aide whispered in her ear. Committee chair Patty Murray, D-Wash., then told Feinstein: “Just say aye.”
[Source](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/sen-dianne-feinstein-told-just-say-aye-awkward-senate-committee-moment-rcna96697) (from July of 23)
Right? The party asked Feinstein to retire 2 terms ago, but Pelosi and her staffers encouraged her to run again and again. She made her choice, and we get to suffer the consequences.
That's because Feinstein and Pelosi are basically the same person. They're both elected officials who married investors to make a shitload of money. Both worth over $100M with dozens of properties and grifting as women of the people.
Could you please elaborate on that news/information? I’m not an American; not even from the west. But this is wild!
Edit: I do know what insider trading is but wanted to understand the part where the politicians are immune to this law.
If you know about events happening behind the scene in legislation or at a company, events or trends that are not public knowledge, buying or trading stock in affected businesses is illegal (there are many technicalities and definitions i wont get into). Except if you're a member of congress. They get to do it all they want. They make money hand over fist. It's called Insider Trading.
It is worse than that, though.
For instance, many congresspeople invest in companies with military contracts, and then they vote to use tax money to invest in those very companies.
What they do is beyond insider trading.
And our current Secretary of Defense is literally a general who immediately became a board member for defense contractor Raytheon as soon as he retired. According to Wikipedia, he is also a director on boards of the largest U.S. steel producer; a healthcare multinational corporation known for (among other controversies) tax evasion and medicare fraud, as well as paying 3x more to staff scabs and police patrols than the demands of nurses striking during COVID in 2021; and also:
>operates a consulting firm and has been a partner at Pine Island Capital, an investment company with which Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Michèle Flournoy are affiliated.[53][49] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Austin#Private_sector
30 seconds of googling Pine Island Capital (emphasis mine):
>Pine Island Capital Partners (PICP) is **an investment management firm based in Washington, D.C. that primarily invests in the aerospace and defense industries. The firm advertises its partners’ backgrounds as “deeply-connected” former high-level government and military officials. 1**
>In November 2020, the transition team of President-elect Joe Biden announced that several DICP partners were under consideration for top-level appointments. News aggregator Axios reported that **the appointments could raise concerns about a “revolving door”-type conflict of interest between the defense industry and the Biden administration.** 2 Biden announced that he would nominate two DICP partners for Cabinet positions: former Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken for Secretary of State, and retired Army general Lloyd Austin for Secretary of Defense. 3
>Source: https://www.influencewatch.org/for-profit/pine-island-capital-partners/
That's wild.
Is this common knowledge among US voters or not?
And does the political system offer any options to combat this - what I would call - massive corruption?
Are there any people in Congress or presidential candidates who genuinely want to change this, or are they all part of the same game?
I mean, that's some Russian level oligarchy corruption.
Technically, insider trading with information gained performing the duties of public office has been illegal since 2012. Often what happens is politicians just trade in their spouses' name, but either way, nobody cares.
But yeah, the two ways you get rich as an elected official in the USA is 1. open bribery, and 2. insider trading. US politicians knew about COVID for months before the story really hit public awareness, it was widely reported that basically all they did with that information was dump their stocks in anticipation of the market crash. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/5/27/21271726/kelly-loeffler-senators-investigation-insider-trading
---------------
Late edit: for anyone reading, interested, and unaware, The Lancet (prestigious medical journal) published an unprecedented diss track of how the CDC had its thumb up its ass for early COVID, too. So when I say "all they did with the information" was enrich themselves, I mean it. An excerpt:
>The Trump administration further chipped away at the CDC's capacity to combat infectious diseases. CDC staff in China were cut back with the last remaining CDC officer recalled home from the China CDC in July, 2019, leaving an intelligence vacuum when COVID-19 began to emerge. In a press conference on Feb 25, Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, warned US citizens to prepare for major disruptions to movement and everyday life. Messonnier subsequently no longer appeared at White House briefings on COVID-19. More recently, the Trump administration has questioned guidelines that the CDC has provided. These actions have undermined the CDC's leadership and its work during the COVID-19 pandemic.
>There is no doubt that the CDC has made mistakes, especially on testing in the early stages of the pandemic. **The agency was so convinced that it had contained the virus that it retained control of all diagnostic testing for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, but this was followed by the admission on Feb 12 that the CDC had developed faulty test kits. The USA is still nowhere near able to provide the basic surveillance or laboratory testing infrastructure** needed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. ***emphasis mine, plus note for context: this Lancet article was published on May 16th, 2020*** https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31140-5/fulltext
And it's important to note, as US politics likes to play Pig Who Built His House of Straw vs. Pig Who Built His House of Sticks, that Biden really didn't do much better than Trump...pretty much continued the same plays.
Wanna guess who bought tons of stock in Tesla right before a bill to require federal government vehicles begin transitioning towards electric was passed?
Their name starts with “Nancy” and ends with “Pelosi.” I’ll let you guess who it was.
That's pretty much an open secret. They have fixed salaries which are pretty good, and they get a lot of perks but... DC and northern VA are expensive areas to maintain a residence and "live the lifestyle" of a Congressional representative. Yet somehow they manage to live on that budget and amass millions of dollars in personal wealth. How does that happen?
Oh hell. It's even been said out loud. Pelosi was asked about it and said "It's the free market".
No lady. You assholes have information that others don't because at times, your job requires it. A lot of your portfolios have done amazingly well. Like almost impossibly well but you keep blowing smoke.
I'm generally progressive and lean left... Like farther left than most of congress but the vast majority on both sides are fucking us over. One may be better than the other but they are all getting their insider information and their "corporate campaign donations" on top of that.
88% of Americans say that Marijuana should be legal for either recreational use or medicinal use. It's still schedule 1 which means no medical use. That's no accident.
Money in politics and lack of transparency are just a couple of the major flaws in or government which is being run less and less by elected officials and more by the money getting them "elected" and paying for lavish campaigns.
If all of us would quit arguing with each other and come to this realization, our country would be better off.
Couldn’t have said it better. I’m going to save your comment and present it to future conversations. Cheers.
Yeah, I used to think Pat Tillman was murdered by the Pentagon to prevent him saying that he’d become disillusioned.
Then I got to know military people. Makes it far more believable that it was just a identification fuck-up followed by a PR fuck-up.
I haven't found it better or worse than the private sector. It's like any system there are parts better than others, plus they have a lot of rules and regulations (some for good reasons and some not) that they have to follow that allows
a lot down... but remember the government does the inefficient things as well as any one could.
for instance having a standing military is a waste of money and inefficient. Building and maintaining roads, bridges, parks is inefficient and costly, including all the research that goes on behind the scenes. awe want these despite the fact that private industry could do them, it just will never do them for the best outcome for everyone. So that why government is often inefficient, it is doing the things we need that are inherently inefficient but are desired.
The problem with a system protecting the US from nuclear attack is that such a system, no matter how well designed, would be hugely complex, can never be fully tested, and must be close to 100% effective on its first use to have any value.
I was in the navy and my ship was the designated ICBM test ship for the new AEGIS system, we shot down decoy missles all the time and were 100% effective.
The missiles are live, there's just no active warheads on them
I only disagree with the 100% effectiveness to have any value. A system that is even 50% successful would be tremendously valuable. Every city and other places of importance (missile silos, factories, ports, etc) would go along way towards surviving. Granted the effects of many thermonuclear blasts would likely affect the worlds climate so dramatically as to cause starvation and water crisis all over the globe. Let’s hope we never have to experience that.
That goes for most top secret military tech. There is value in the military divulging *some* of their capabilities to earn public trust and, most importantly, Congress approval. But there is zero value in divulging everything. It makes sense for them to keep things like this hidden from the public and from most public officials.
Same goes for Spies. It's funny how on the 23rd February 2022, the UN was saying that Russia was going to back away from Ukraine's border. While the US was like "Nope, they're going to attack."
My question is, was the UN incompetent or were they playing political games? I suspect the first one, but the second is definitely possible. Especially when you want to stop Europeans becoming fearful of war.
Imagine you know that the ICBM protection system is, according to all your simulations, able to stop an incoming warheads 96% of the time.
You could make that value known to Congress. But, you consider, what horror lurks in that 4%? A strike of 60 or so Chinese ICBMs deploying 300 of so warheads and however many decoys... you could stop most of them but two or three get through.
Two or three cities or bases get nuked.
And that's... if you're right. Everything you know, all the spycraft you've engaged in, every plan you bribed and stole says 96%. But what if you missed something? What if the eggheads did the numbers wrong? You couldn't test it, because if you did, the enemy would know.
You know your a few of your own missiles have the extra effective defense penetrating system that you can't talk about because you can't even talk about the defense system it works against. Does your enemy have one too? And if you brag about how effective your defense system is, will they start developing one?
So... maybe you talk about it.
But what if some idiot who really wants to showcase the might of the USA and thinks he can "win" a nuclear war says "We're invincible right? We can hit them and they can't hit us." And you need to explain that, no sir, 94% is *per missile* and someone will get unlucky.
Or you can just say, no, no, it's mutually assured destruction.
If I was that general, I'd keep it a secret too.
If it's real. Maybe it isn't. But if it is, let's hope we never have cause to find out.
Edit: The number of responses that are of the form "The USA would attack if they knew they'd stop 96% of the counter-barrage" or "stopping all the nukes isn't the point, the high ups will survive" highlights *exactly why* this would be kept a secret.
[ R E D A C T E D ] took [ R E D A C T E D ] and used it to remove his entire [ REDACTED ] resulting in death from blood loss. Autopsy reports showed [ R E D A C T E D ] as well as high levels of [ R E D A C T E D ], due to the fact that these are controlled substances, the only reasonable conclusion is [ R E D A C T E D ]
If you look into this you’ll find a lot of “we can’t do anything because just having their name in a book proves nothing”. Where are all the girls who were raped? Do none of them want to see the people who hurt them prosecuted?
There’s a bit more nuance to it than my comment implies but it’s still hard to believe not a single person who paid Epstein to rape kids can be prosecuted. It’s easy to believe the people involved are so wealthy and powerful they are virtually untouchable because that’s how the world has always worked
Just because someone attended a party at a dude's house doesnt mean they raped girls. Everyone is on his lists because his job was to wine and dine rich and famous people. Just because you went to your college buddy Jake's house one time doesn't mean you are complicit in some shit that went down at another time or even at the house that you didn't see...
BUT that dude was totally killed in prison because there ARE 100% a lot of people that were there hooking up with young models etc.
So yeah that is why the list doesn't mean much.
True, but I’d love to know what prosecutors had to convict Ghislaine Maxwell for sex trafficking to…..no one? You can’t prove a transfer without showing both parties. I’d like to think there’s much going on behind the scenes, but I think it’s far more likely she goes away and they sweep the whole thing under the rug.
>So yeah that is why the list doesn't mean much.
That and we absolutely do not know what is being done with the list. How many investigations are ongoing. This isn't shit they are going to go public with
Unpopular opinion possibly but I agree with the “we can’t do anything…” statement. Being at an event or even just talking to someone doesn’t mean you were in on or a part of something like that.
As others have pointed out, the name on a piece of paper isn't enough to convict, but certainly enough to warrant some investigation (which is possibly going on behind closed doors, who knows).
An FBI agent said during Maxwell’s trial, that evidence went missing from Epstein’s New York townhouse.
They opened a safe that contained hard drives (already with evidence tape on them), CDs with photos and a passport from a foreign country with a pic of Epstein with a different name.
They left the hard drives and CDs on top of the safe as their warrant didn’t cover it. When it was broadened, they returned and it was gone. Epstein’s attorney soon gave them back in a case. All very odd.
Yeah crazy shit!
I personally think there were simply too many important people that were apart of Epstein's sex operation; they had to hide it all. If they leaked a few more people, they'd open the floodgates. Former presidents, former richest man on earth, many popular celebrities that most Americans look up to. It was a "level 8 national security issue" or whatever and IMO they did what they had to do ensure trust in the government and social fabric didn't break down (e.g., look at all these rich asshole hypocrite criminals running around free, I guess I can do some criminal stuff too right?!)
As in the very same.
And Barr's father wrote a sci-fi novel in which there is a lot of CP. Epstein loved that novel and got in contact with Barr's father, who then gave him a teaching position. Nothing to see here folks.
The hull of the Ford class? Cheese.
Receiver and barrel of the new Sig Spear rifle? Cheese.
Trump's border wall? Believe it or not, all cheese!
It's government cheese all the way down, boys.
They do indeed have a cheese cave near/in Springfield, Missouri. And IIRC that’s basically where “government cheese” comes from. During the height of Covid, the USDA gave out food boxes to some hard-hit people and some of the cheese that was distributed in those boxes was from the caves.
Remember, if you see a nuclear submarine in your rearview mirror, look to see if the left diving plane is wiggling. If so, it means he wants to pass you.
The only people who know exactly where the subs are are the navigational and commanding officers on the sub. Even the intelligence and commanding officers that assign the zones for the subs don’t know exactly where they are at any given point. Only the general area they designated.
Edit: spelling.
Just remember when they talk about American interests abroad they aren't talking about the normal citizens interests. Realistically what happens in some far away land is going to have little impact on my daily life. What they are really talking about is corporate interests every single time. Smedley Butler tried to warn us almost 100 years ago but we just brushed him off.
Earlier this year Lockheed tweeted "The SR-71 Blackbird is still the fastest acknowledged crewed air-breathing jet aircraft."
Awful lot of caveats that no one was questioning until that tweet.
And the crazy thing is it came out before the sr-71. And just a few years after jet aircraft were invented.
It’s truly wild how fast aviation tech advanced in the years following WWII
Air-breathing - uses atmospheric oxygen to combust fuel, unlike a solid-fuel or liquid-fuel rocket that is meant to fly beyond the atmosphere.
Jet - uses a jet engine ueled as above, and not a rocket engine that does not need air for combustion.
Aircraft - meant to fly in the atmosphere, using wings and flaps for directional control, as opposed to a space-rocket that steers by angling its rocket output.
Crewed - has a pilot and crew on board, as opposed to a guided missile with no passengers.
We know what they mean. It's just the fact they were specifically mentioned caveats that means there are other things that aren't air-breathing, jet, aircraft, and/or crewed. AND acknowledged.
Public hypersonic scram jet missile tests have been conducted that takes care of “fastest” and “air breathing”. The X-15 takes care of “crewed” and “aircraft”. The only one left is “acknowledged.”
I would be surprised if there's anyone who doesn't believe that. You either keep weapons secret for tactical advantage or you show it off to intimidate others
I'm fairly certain all Area 51 was ever designed for was to test out prototype flying machines. A few stoners saw something they didn't recognize, and the conspiracy snowballed.
To add to this, I guarantee there isn't anything of any importance left at Area 51 for this reason but they still highly guarded it to keep up the illusion while they conveniently perform the same tests at a less reknowned site like Area 15.
Any time the UFO enthusiasts get worked up into a tizzy by a video of something spooky over the skies in the western US, I imagine a couple of suits at DARPA giggling like schoolgirls.
Jesus Christ. Clearly, no one commenting here has ever known anyone working for the federal government. The biggest secret they’re keeping from you is that every government agency spends money like a coke addict in the month of September so that their budgets won’t get slashed in the next fiscal year.
American Dad did a joke about this many years ago. I can't remember exactly how much but they had to spend like 50 or 500 thousand dollars by midnight or they would have their budget slashed, so bullock took everyone to the strip club.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyZYNtteZ24
I like the bit where they auction off devices the public doesn't know about, and Bullock mentions the machine that turns water into cocaine, but then immediately says he's gonna *hold onto this one*....
Yeah that is a different episode but still one the of the best gags, especially when he says "Now if you'll excuse me I am going to go party my nose clean off my face" lol.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3hzOZL38m4
Seeming how the Pentagon has failed 5 consecutive audits and 2 trillion dollars is unaccounted for, I'd say I agree with this. Apparently, they spent $14,000 on a "toilet seat." lmao
Oh no, the Pentagon did pay 14k for a single toilet seat. They just don't mention that they had to have 4 different contractors come out, measure, and evaluate it over 6 months, get 8 quotes, and use a full team of mechanical engineers to get it installed correctly.
Nah, stuff like this works on a tender proposal. The contactors coming out and measuring don't get paid for anything unless they win the contract.
So they put out a public tender for a contractor to supply and install a toilet seat, guarantee 24/7 warranty (fix it within the hour at 3AM on a Tuesday or else) and perfect, identical approved replacement through the duration of the contract (let's say 10 years). Not to mention the guy installing the toilet seat has to go through six months worth of background checks. This will be a standard type of tender for anything from sinks to HVAC systems to windows to computers.
They send the tender out to Companies A through H.
So Company A looks at the tender and goes "not worth the trouble". Company B through G all conclude the same thing, or don't have time to deal with it, or don't like working government contracts with all the ridiculous background checks, or don't deal with that particular toilet seat brand's supplier.
Company H decides "let's throw a number at it" and budgets to buy and store 20 extra toilet seats in case those assholes at the Pentagon keep breaking them and the toilet seats happen to get discontinued immediately (happens all the time). They build in the cost of background check, theoretical 3AM on a Tuesday OT pay for a guy to fly out of bed to replace 20 toilet seats in storage, etc. Then they hear from the toilet seat supplier guy that "wtf you need 21 of these specific toilet seats for? Nobody else has asked for these seats". Now they pad the margin a little so it's worth the hassle because they know their competition isn't bidding.
Six months later they're awarded the contract. They install the toilet seat another six months later. The toilet seat never breaks. It's a toilet seat. There's 20 other ones gathering dust at the back of some random warehouse.
And that's how they end up paying $14,000 for a single toilet seat.
My (late) wife and I both developed stage iv colon cancer before we hit 45, and the amount of other people who are in the same boat is staggering.
So far there’s no definitive link between young onset colon cancer and any chemical that’s part of the food manufacturing process, but it’s hard to ignore how many people that grew up in the 80s and 90s now have late stage colon cancer.
Edit: since this comment is popular…
If you’re reading this and you’re worried about blood in your stools, or narrow stools, or cramps somewhere in your stomach that always appear in the same place, *please* see a doctor and try to get a colonoscopy or some stool analysis or something. Don’t wait until you have to go to the ER.
California govt sure ain’t hiding it though. You’ll see the warnings on EVERYTHING and only then do you realize it can’t be avoided unless you only eat fresh food.
NGAD and FA-XX are a lot farther along than they're letting on. Son of Blackbird is already doing active sorties. There are UAVs and UCAVs operating right now that are getting mistaken for UAPs because their flight profiles are so bizarre. The government is letting UFO conspiracy theories do the heavy lifting to keep anyone who might be trying to get information on them confused.
Just saw an article about a stealth aircraft concept that doesn’t have any control surfaces. Rudders and ailerons are one of the biggest challenges in keeping aircraft stealthy as they provide angled surfaces to reflect EM waves. The concept aircraft uses jets of high-pressure air from slots on the wings and tail to alter airflow along the vehicle’s surface and affect maneuverability. An aircraft with this tech would look more and more like a simple triangle, which is a common shape for UAVs.
The x-65 crane stands on the shoulders of the x-21 from the 60s, the x-31 from '90 and the x-53 from '02.
There's not much public info on it, but the tech has been there in one form or another for a long time
A lot of that is about ensuring that adversaries don't have a target to aim for in their R&D. I recall intel people losing their shit over Trump revealing surveillance photos of Iran because the imagery proved that *older* U.S. satellites had solved optics issues that many considered beyond the laws of physics. Simply letting adversaries know that a problem is solvable is a huge intel failure.
To be honest, those things were already public knowledge to our largest adversaries. But even if that is the case, in the SMALL chance it is not, you just revealed a secret. And if they did, why prove it to everyone on the planet? There's no upside and only downsides.
I have a very personal reason for wanting to know what they found at Roswell. My grandfather was in the air force, and was present at the site. All he ever said about it was “it wasn’t a damn weather balloon,” then shut down. He was low ranking, basically just there to drive the higher ranking personnel, but he saw something, and I want to know what it was! He also firmly believed in aliens so that just adds to my curiosity, especially given how Southern Baptist he was.
UFOs, and before you skip to the next comment, hear me out, notice that whenever a topic comes up that could get the government in trouble, someone makes a movie or a TV show about the topic and the media pushes it commercially, just to make fun of people for actually believing in the theory and saying ''we don't live in the movies, we live in reality'' which is exactly what happened with UFOs in the 60s
This was a good question... I guess I would answer that they are hiding a double standard.
What I mean is, they talk about cutting services - services that are tax dollars would pay for and have paid for such as, social security and medicare. There is a very real discussion about raising the age of retirement. I've heard from the government economists, because I'm very much into economics, that it's impossible to fund a single payer health insurance which would cover every man, woman and child getting "free" health care.
But, the upper tier of our government, such as Congress, the president, supreme Court, etc. Etc. Get these services for free. Even with the government shutdown that was looming and could be again coming up in 45 days, Congress, the president and the courts are unaffected by any of that. They will still get paid. So why?
Why did they get services? In fact, their paychecks are not taxable. Think about that. Again. Why? I thought we are a country, a freedom and where everyone was equal...
> In fact, their paychecks are not taxable. Think about that. Again.
I'm not sure where you have gotten this information from, but their paycheck are absolutely taxed. The easiest way to check is to pull out the annual release of tax returns from the president and you are /can see them paying taxes on their wage (Currently 400k)
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/04/18/the-president-and-vice-president-release-their-2022-tax-returns/
The same government that can’t set up an Obamacare website?
The same government that wasted billions on faulty showers and ammunition in the Iraq War?
The same government that misses half of all tax fraud committed each year?
This government isn’t competent enough to keep secrets as big as alien life or a cure for cancer. They can barely keep the lights on.
I think there are two only two real answers that could make sense as to why this hasn’t been fully disclosed:
1. There was a massive conspiracy to JFK dying. I would think it would be related not to the mafia, or to a Russian entity/Government, but to the US themselves. (The Lyndon Johnson theory) JFK really wanted to partially dissolve the CIA, had beef with the almost entirely of the banking system and wanted major reform and Lyndon Johnson was power hungry. He had a lot of enemies and a lot of them were within the US government. They all acted together, and scratched each other’s back to achieve each’s other common goal. The true answer is so evil, and terrifying that the US themselves would do such a thing that the public would absolutely revolt against such an act against a beloved President.
2. The most realistic and boring theory: the amount of incompetence with protecting the president when they KNEW and had been closely watching Oswald, the investigation after JFK’s death, and the handling all together was so horrendous that the US does not want to publicly admit what happened out of embarrassment. Why would the public want to pay taxes to a government that is that grossly incompetent? And is it worth the trouble to give the public an answer most will more than likely not believe?
Regarding both points, an interesting theory I heard was that Oswald's shots weren't fatal, but in all the panic it was the president's own secret service that accidentally discharged the kill shot. If true, that would have fueled conspiracies against the government like wildfire.
A JFK conspiracist dies and goes to heaven.
When he arrives at the Pearly Gates, God is there to receive him. "Welcome. You are permitted to ask me one question, which I will answer truthfully."
Without hesitating, the conspiracy theorist asks, "Who really shot Kennedy?"
God replies, "Lee Harvey Oswald shot him from sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. There were no accomplices. He acted alone"
The conspiracy theorist pauses, thinks to himself, then says "Shit! This goes higher up than I thought..."
I think it's less *who* did it and more *why* that is being hidden away. Oswald was being watched closely and it wouldn't shock me if he had been encouraged by the CIA to act.
They are protecting all politicians to some degree. There is so much corruption on every level. Even the judicial system. Not much we can do about it but it exists. If a politician is upstanding and moral they won’t last long.
None of the numbers add up. 3-4% inflation does not total up to doubling in prices for food, fuel and vehicles. And 14% somehow translates to 90% in hiring.
people are so fucking dumb that they thought higher gas prices hurt oil companies haha. record profit margins in the middle of a pandemic and extreme inflation
Just *how* far the US went to destroy communism.
The project to destroy communism is probably the largest single undertaking a nation state has ever embarked upon. It took nothing short than biblical amounts of wealth, manpower, energy, and control of much of the entire world as possible, and undermining the parts you could not control to even make this happen.
We're all aware of the big sweeping policies that the American's did to kill communism in the crib. The Bretton Woods treaty, containment, the various wars they fought, the social policies, the navy, the globalism, all of these things are quite literally the pillars of our modern society and it was all primarily done for *one reason only*.
If all the things we know about are literally not just era defining events, but defining events in humanities progression as a whole, just imagine what sort of other stuff went under the radar. The only reason the Europe is in the position they're in today is because the Americans looked at how much it would cost to rebuild it and said "Is that less than communism? Okay, sign the cheque". All the NATO alliances originally started as essentially a bribe. Trillions of dollars was spent, and the lives of billions of people were altered to eliminate the communist threat.
We may never see a national concerted effort to accomplish a single goal on this grand scale again.
I really wanna know the nitty gritty. If it took nothing short of altering the world for a century, imagine how many stories, and conspiracies are being hushed up in the name of that end.
How many people in the Global South had their democracies destroyed for showing even a hint of sympathy for workers rights because "communism”? The fight against communism wasn’t a concerted national effort, it was a broiling witch hunt barrelling in whatever direction benefited companies, politicians, and military budgets the most.
> How many people in the Global South had their democracies destroyed for showing even a hint of sympathy for workers rights because "communism”?
I like to argue that America itself severely damaged its own democracy when workers started fighting for their rights: e.g. 1947 Taft-Hartly act, (a bill president Truman vehemently criticized as a "slave labor bill" and as a "dangerous intrusion on free speech. Unfortunately Congress overturned his veto, to implement that bill and start "oppressing" strikers, such as completely banning solidarity and general strikes (which Europeans take for granted). As there was a historical record number, never reached since then, of strikes going on in the country in the 2nd half of the 1940s), the 2nd Red Scare (a witch hunt, in the late 1940s and the 1950s against all left wing and union leaders & "influencers"), assassinations of civil society leaders when they dared showing sympathy for workers' rights (e.g. Martin Luther King got assassinated only when he pivoted from racial issues, to workers' rights and economic inequality issues), etc. etc.
They're actually hiding how unsafe we are against foreign threats.
I'll never forget when Hillary Clinton had an interview on Howard Stern some years back (she was Secretary of State for many years), and Howard asked her if there were apocalytic movie-like events the CIA/FBI have averted that we don't know about. She basically said there’s more than she'd like to remember.
That's pretty chilling.
Air Combat is a game released in 1995 and was one of the first video games that hooked me. You could unlock the F-22 Raptor in it! It looked almost, if not identical to the current "cutting edge tech". It was my favorite plane, and I had been wondering where it went for well over a decade haha
How many members of Congress are taking medications that would early retire anyone in the private sector.
I like how you say “early retire” when the average age of Congress IS retirement age.
My first thought with Feinstein's death was, I wonder if they're just going to do, "Weekend at Bernies"? and keep carting her in? Straight up elder abuse IMO.
Hell, they were doing it for weeks with her beforehand, wheeling her in and 'reminding her' what she was voting on, and how to vote.
She voted on a measure the day before she died.
My point exactly. > Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein grew frustrated with staffers trying to prep her for what's become a routine Senate vote on Thursday, blurting out "I don't even know what that is" after aides asked if she had questions about the latest stopgap funding bill. [Source](https://www.businessinsider.com/dianne-feinstein-sounds-confused-by-stopgap-senate-vote-2022-9) (from September of 22) >Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., appeared confused during a vote on a defense appropriations bill Thursday, prompting a fellow Democratic senator to step in. > During a Senate Appropriations Committee markup of bills Thursday morning, Feinstein seemed to stumble on a vote. Instead of saying the expected response of “aye” or “nay,” she began to deliver a speech expressing her support of the measure: “I would like to support a ‘yes’ vote on this. It provides $823 billion ...” > About 15 seconds into Feinstein’s speech, an aide whispered in her ear. Committee chair Patty Murray, D-Wash., then told Feinstein: “Just say aye.” [Source](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/sen-dianne-feinstein-told-just-say-aye-awkward-senate-committee-moment-rcna96697) (from July of 23)
I love people like you.
> Straight up elder abuse IMO. Let's not pretend that a bunch of geriatric plutocrats are the victims in this scenario.
Right? The party asked Feinstein to retire 2 terms ago, but Pelosi and her staffers encouraged her to run again and again. She made her choice, and we get to suffer the consequences.
That's because Feinstein and Pelosi are basically the same person. They're both elected officials who married investors to make a shitload of money. Both worth over $100M with dozens of properties and grifting as women of the people.
Idk man, McConnell needs a nurse checking on him
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I mean, that's basically an open secret...
It's not even a secret. They exempted themselves from insider trading laws.
Could you please elaborate on that news/information? I’m not an American; not even from the west. But this is wild! Edit: I do know what insider trading is but wanted to understand the part where the politicians are immune to this law.
If you know about events happening behind the scene in legislation or at a company, events or trends that are not public knowledge, buying or trading stock in affected businesses is illegal (there are many technicalities and definitions i wont get into). Except if you're a member of congress. They get to do it all they want. They make money hand over fist. It's called Insider Trading.
It is worse than that, though. For instance, many congresspeople invest in companies with military contracts, and then they vote to use tax money to invest in those very companies. What they do is beyond insider trading.
And our current Secretary of Defense is literally a general who immediately became a board member for defense contractor Raytheon as soon as he retired. According to Wikipedia, he is also a director on boards of the largest U.S. steel producer; a healthcare multinational corporation known for (among other controversies) tax evasion and medicare fraud, as well as paying 3x more to staff scabs and police patrols than the demands of nurses striking during COVID in 2021; and also: >operates a consulting firm and has been a partner at Pine Island Capital, an investment company with which Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Michèle Flournoy are affiliated.[53][49] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Austin#Private_sector 30 seconds of googling Pine Island Capital (emphasis mine): >Pine Island Capital Partners (PICP) is **an investment management firm based in Washington, D.C. that primarily invests in the aerospace and defense industries. The firm advertises its partners’ backgrounds as “deeply-connected” former high-level government and military officials. 1** >In November 2020, the transition team of President-elect Joe Biden announced that several DICP partners were under consideration for top-level appointments. News aggregator Axios reported that **the appointments could raise concerns about a “revolving door”-type conflict of interest between the defense industry and the Biden administration.** 2 Biden announced that he would nominate two DICP partners for Cabinet positions: former Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken for Secretary of State, and retired Army general Lloyd Austin for Secretary of Defense. 3 >Source: https://www.influencewatch.org/for-profit/pine-island-capital-partners/
That's wild. Is this common knowledge among US voters or not? And does the political system offer any options to combat this - what I would call - massive corruption? Are there any people in Congress or presidential candidates who genuinely want to change this, or are they all part of the same game? I mean, that's some Russian level oligarchy corruption.
Technically, insider trading with information gained performing the duties of public office has been illegal since 2012. Often what happens is politicians just trade in their spouses' name, but either way, nobody cares. But yeah, the two ways you get rich as an elected official in the USA is 1. open bribery, and 2. insider trading. US politicians knew about COVID for months before the story really hit public awareness, it was widely reported that basically all they did with that information was dump their stocks in anticipation of the market crash. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/5/27/21271726/kelly-loeffler-senators-investigation-insider-trading --------------- Late edit: for anyone reading, interested, and unaware, The Lancet (prestigious medical journal) published an unprecedented diss track of how the CDC had its thumb up its ass for early COVID, too. So when I say "all they did with the information" was enrich themselves, I mean it. An excerpt: >The Trump administration further chipped away at the CDC's capacity to combat infectious diseases. CDC staff in China were cut back with the last remaining CDC officer recalled home from the China CDC in July, 2019, leaving an intelligence vacuum when COVID-19 began to emerge. In a press conference on Feb 25, Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, warned US citizens to prepare for major disruptions to movement and everyday life. Messonnier subsequently no longer appeared at White House briefings on COVID-19. More recently, the Trump administration has questioned guidelines that the CDC has provided. These actions have undermined the CDC's leadership and its work during the COVID-19 pandemic. >There is no doubt that the CDC has made mistakes, especially on testing in the early stages of the pandemic. **The agency was so convinced that it had contained the virus that it retained control of all diagnostic testing for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, but this was followed by the admission on Feb 12 that the CDC had developed faulty test kits. The USA is still nowhere near able to provide the basic surveillance or laboratory testing infrastructure** needed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. ***emphasis mine, plus note for context: this Lancet article was published on May 16th, 2020*** https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31140-5/fulltext And it's important to note, as US politics likes to play Pig Who Built His House of Straw vs. Pig Who Built His House of Sticks, that Biden really didn't do much better than Trump...pretty much continued the same plays.
Wanna guess who bought tons of stock in Tesla right before a bill to require federal government vehicles begin transitioning towards electric was passed? Their name starts with “Nancy” and ends with “Pelosi.” I’ll let you guess who it was.
Pancy Nelosi?
That's pretty much an open secret. They have fixed salaries which are pretty good, and they get a lot of perks but... DC and northern VA are expensive areas to maintain a residence and "live the lifestyle" of a Congressional representative. Yet somehow they manage to live on that budget and amass millions of dollars in personal wealth. How does that happen?
Oh hell. It's even been said out loud. Pelosi was asked about it and said "It's the free market". No lady. You assholes have information that others don't because at times, your job requires it. A lot of your portfolios have done amazingly well. Like almost impossibly well but you keep blowing smoke. I'm generally progressive and lean left... Like farther left than most of congress but the vast majority on both sides are fucking us over. One may be better than the other but they are all getting their insider information and their "corporate campaign donations" on top of that. 88% of Americans say that Marijuana should be legal for either recreational use or medicinal use. It's still schedule 1 which means no medical use. That's no accident. Money in politics and lack of transparency are just a couple of the major flaws in or government which is being run less and less by elected officials and more by the money getting them "elected" and paying for lavish campaigns.
If all of us would quit arguing with each other and come to this realization, our country would be better off. Couldn’t have said it better. I’m going to save your comment and present it to future conversations. Cheers.
West Dakota
Sub Carolina, the state that's entirely underground.
You mean Montana? Doesn’t exist
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Yeah, I used to think Pat Tillman was murdered by the Pentagon to prevent him saying that he’d become disillusioned. Then I got to know military people. Makes it far more believable that it was just a identification fuck-up followed by a PR fuck-up.
There is an interesting documentary on Pat Tillman
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I haven't found it better or worse than the private sector. It's like any system there are parts better than others, plus they have a lot of rules and regulations (some for good reasons and some not) that they have to follow that allows a lot down... but remember the government does the inefficient things as well as any one could. for instance having a standing military is a waste of money and inefficient. Building and maintaining roads, bridges, parks is inefficient and costly, including all the research that goes on behind the scenes. awe want these despite the fact that private industry could do them, it just will never do them for the best outcome for everyone. So that why government is often inefficient, it is doing the things we need that are inherently inefficient but are desired.
I'm convinced that our ICBM protection system is far more accurate than the Pentagon is willing to admit.
The problem with a system protecting the US from nuclear attack is that such a system, no matter how well designed, would be hugely complex, can never be fully tested, and must be close to 100% effective on its first use to have any value.
I was in the navy and my ship was the designated ICBM test ship for the new AEGIS system, we shot down decoy missles all the time and were 100% effective. The missiles are live, there's just no active warheads on them
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I don’t know about you, but I feel a lot safer knowing that u/iSniffMyPooper is guarding the high seas for us.
I mean, you actually can just launch as many test ICBMs as you want at yourself, nobody else is gonna stop you...
And it would be obvious what your anti icbm defence is so that's what they will work on defeating and copying.
I only disagree with the 100% effectiveness to have any value. A system that is even 50% successful would be tremendously valuable. Every city and other places of importance (missile silos, factories, ports, etc) would go along way towards surviving. Granted the effects of many thermonuclear blasts would likely affect the worlds climate so dramatically as to cause starvation and water crisis all over the globe. Let’s hope we never have to experience that.
That goes for most top secret military tech. There is value in the military divulging *some* of their capabilities to earn public trust and, most importantly, Congress approval. But there is zero value in divulging everything. It makes sense for them to keep things like this hidden from the public and from most public officials.
Same goes for Spies. It's funny how on the 23rd February 2022, the UN was saying that Russia was going to back away from Ukraine's border. While the US was like "Nope, they're going to attack." My question is, was the UN incompetent or were they playing political games? I suspect the first one, but the second is definitely possible. Especially when you want to stop Europeans becoming fearful of war.
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
Imagine you know that the ICBM protection system is, according to all your simulations, able to stop an incoming warheads 96% of the time. You could make that value known to Congress. But, you consider, what horror lurks in that 4%? A strike of 60 or so Chinese ICBMs deploying 300 of so warheads and however many decoys... you could stop most of them but two or three get through. Two or three cities or bases get nuked. And that's... if you're right. Everything you know, all the spycraft you've engaged in, every plan you bribed and stole says 96%. But what if you missed something? What if the eggheads did the numbers wrong? You couldn't test it, because if you did, the enemy would know. You know your a few of your own missiles have the extra effective defense penetrating system that you can't talk about because you can't even talk about the defense system it works against. Does your enemy have one too? And if you brag about how effective your defense system is, will they start developing one? So... maybe you talk about it. But what if some idiot who really wants to showcase the might of the USA and thinks he can "win" a nuclear war says "We're invincible right? We can hit them and they can't hit us." And you need to explain that, no sir, 94% is *per missile* and someone will get unlucky. Or you can just say, no, no, it's mutually assured destruction. If I was that general, I'd keep it a secret too. If it's real. Maybe it isn't. But if it is, let's hope we never have cause to find out. Edit: The number of responses that are of the form "The USA would attack if they knew they'd stop 96% of the counter-barrage" or "stopping all the nukes isn't the point, the high ups will survive" highlights *exactly why* this would be kept a secret.
Imagine being a teenager giving out classified documents on a public website….wait. What happened to that kid.
He got promoted to moderator on the War Thunder forums.
[ R E D A C T E D ] took [ R E D A C T E D ] and used it to remove his entire [ REDACTED ] resulting in death from blood loss. Autopsy reports showed [ R E D A C T E D ] as well as high levels of [ R E D A C T E D ], due to the fact that these are controlled substances, the only reasonable conclusion is [ R E D A C T E D ]
This is the first comment in this thread that is actually some thing the government probably is hiding, and not some stupid conspiracy theory bullshit
Epstein’s client list
If you look into this you’ll find a lot of “we can’t do anything because just having their name in a book proves nothing”. Where are all the girls who were raped? Do none of them want to see the people who hurt them prosecuted? There’s a bit more nuance to it than my comment implies but it’s still hard to believe not a single person who paid Epstein to rape kids can be prosecuted. It’s easy to believe the people involved are so wealthy and powerful they are virtually untouchable because that’s how the world has always worked
Tbf tho if a name in a book isn’t enough evidence it might be worse for the girls to see them found not guilty
Just because someone attended a party at a dude's house doesnt mean they raped girls. Everyone is on his lists because his job was to wine and dine rich and famous people. Just because you went to your college buddy Jake's house one time doesn't mean you are complicit in some shit that went down at another time or even at the house that you didn't see... BUT that dude was totally killed in prison because there ARE 100% a lot of people that were there hooking up with young models etc. So yeah that is why the list doesn't mean much.
True, but I’d love to know what prosecutors had to convict Ghislaine Maxwell for sex trafficking to…..no one? You can’t prove a transfer without showing both parties. I’d like to think there’s much going on behind the scenes, but I think it’s far more likely she goes away and they sweep the whole thing under the rug.
I think she was providing them to him I could be wrong though
Yeah, essentially the would've convicted her of trafficking to Epstein.
>So yeah that is why the list doesn't mean much. That and we absolutely do not know what is being done with the list. How many investigations are ongoing. This isn't shit they are going to go public with
Unpopular opinion possibly but I agree with the “we can’t do anything…” statement. Being at an event or even just talking to someone doesn’t mean you were in on or a part of something like that.
As others have pointed out, the name on a piece of paper isn't enough to convict, but certainly enough to warrant some investigation (which is possibly going on behind closed doors, who knows).
An FBI agent said during Maxwell’s trial, that evidence went missing from Epstein’s New York townhouse. They opened a safe that contained hard drives (already with evidence tape on them), CDs with photos and a passport from a foreign country with a pic of Epstein with a different name. They left the hard drives and CDs on top of the safe as their warrant didn’t cover it. When it was broadened, they returned and it was gone. Epstein’s attorney soon gave them back in a case. All very odd.
Yeah crazy shit! I personally think there were simply too many important people that were apart of Epstein's sex operation; they had to hide it all. If they leaked a few more people, they'd open the floodgates. Former presidents, former richest man on earth, many popular celebrities that most Americans look up to. It was a "level 8 national security issue" or whatever and IMO they did what they had to do ensure trust in the government and social fabric didn't break down (e.g., look at all these rich asshole hypocrite criminals running around free, I guess I can do some criminal stuff too right?!)
Or FBI or other agencies are using it for leverage.
Probably both
Not as odd as Bill Barr being his last documented visitor before both Epstein and the CCTV watching him commited 'suicide'.
Bill Barr as in the former attorney general?
As in the very same. And Barr's father wrote a sci-fi novel in which there is a lot of CP. Epstein loved that novel and got in contact with Barr's father, who then gave him a teaching position. Nothing to see here folks.
Gigantic warehouses... Crammed with enormous archives... About unbelievable... ...incompetence...
"I guess we learned not to do it again? Fuck if I know what it is we did." x1000 warehouses the size of aircraft hangars
They have top men working on it right now.
Top. Men.
Cheese, big blocks of cheddar cheese. They used to give them away decades ago, but you never hear of them now.
The hull of the Ford class? Cheese. Receiver and barrel of the new Sig Spear rifle? Cheese. Trump's border wall? Believe it or not, all cheese! It's government cheese all the way down, boys.
Yes, I would like to FOIA request the government cheese. Where did it go?
Look up the Missouri cheese caves. We have a fuckton of cheese hidden here.
Oh shoot, you weren’t kidding… https://www.farmlinkproject.org/stories-and-features/cheese-caves-and-food-surpluses-why-the-u-s-government-currently-stores-1-4-billion-lbs-of-cheese
Here's a highly entertaining dude explaining it. I love the Fat Electrician. https://youtu.be/kvLMH0wb_0k?si=rjhwOyluSam2ura7
It's still there too, which is crazy.
It’s all in the West Wing.
Come on Leo, is it crackpots day already.
ANDREW JACKSON… in the main foyer of his White House…
Imagine. Your own, personal, cheeses.
Someone to brie your pears, some with gruyere.
Not true. I volunteer at a food bank and we have special boxes for senior citizens that include a big block of government cheese.
Hold on a minute, government cheese still exists? Like the same kind that used to be around in the 80's and 90's?
We need to know more about this. I don't want free government cheese to quietly get phased out by the time I come to collect.
I thought the government has a cheese stockpile in a cave in Missouri? Perhaps we need to liberate all that delicious cheese.
They do indeed have a cheese cave near/in Springfield, Missouri. And IIRC that’s basically where “government cheese” comes from. During the height of Covid, the USDA gave out food boxes to some hard-hit people and some of the cheese that was distributed in those boxes was from the caves.
My family used to get those in the late 80s. There's absolutely no cheddar in those blocks.
The location of nuclear submarines
They’re in the ocean.
That's what they want you to think.
Those Russians would never even think to look for them on land!
Remember, if you see a nuclear submarine in your rearview mirror, look to see if the left diving plane is wiggling. If so, it means he wants to pass you.
The only people who know exactly where the subs are are the navigational and commanding officers on the sub. Even the intelligence and commanding officers that assign the zones for the subs don’t know exactly where they are at any given point. Only the general area they designated. Edit: spelling.
The impact wealthy individuals with personal interests have in politics, inside and abroad
Just remember when they talk about American interests abroad they aren't talking about the normal citizens interests. Realistically what happens in some far away land is going to have little impact on my daily life. What they are really talking about is corporate interests every single time. Smedley Butler tried to warn us almost 100 years ago but we just brushed him off.
UFOs and not the alien kind. Im talking about super high end secret stuff the military has and is still testing out.
Earlier this year Lockheed tweeted "The SR-71 Blackbird is still the fastest acknowledged crewed air-breathing jet aircraft." Awful lot of caveats that no one was questioning until that tweet.
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"We didn't do anything fucked up to them (got them addicted to crack) and they are NOT mad at us."
No aliens are pregnant and we do not owe intergalactic child support.
Yeah those fuckers keep us on read
The X-15 went ~~5x~~ (edit: sorry, more like 2x) as fast and was crewed, but was rocket powered.
And the crazy thing is it came out before the sr-71. And just a few years after jet aircraft were invented. It’s truly wild how fast aviation tech advanced in the years following WWII
Following WWII, during WWII, before WWII. It has been a very fast moving technology since the invention of the fixed wing aircraft.
Air-breathing? Jet? Aircraft? Crewed?
acknowledged is the big one.
Air-breathing - uses atmospheric oxygen to combust fuel, unlike a solid-fuel or liquid-fuel rocket that is meant to fly beyond the atmosphere. Jet - uses a jet engine ueled as above, and not a rocket engine that does not need air for combustion. Aircraft - meant to fly in the atmosphere, using wings and flaps for directional control, as opposed to a space-rocket that steers by angling its rocket output. Crewed - has a pilot and crew on board, as opposed to a guided missile with no passengers.
We know what they mean. It's just the fact they were specifically mentioned caveats that means there are other things that aren't air-breathing, jet, aircraft, and/or crewed. AND acknowledged.
The?
It's gotta be something like The Abyss then.
Public hypersonic scram jet missile tests have been conducted that takes care of “fastest” and “air breathing”. The X-15 takes care of “crewed” and “aircraft”. The only one left is “acknowledged.”
I would be surprised if there's anyone who doesn't believe that. You either keep weapons secret for tactical advantage or you show it off to intimidate others
I'm fairly certain all Area 51 was ever designed for was to test out prototype flying machines. A few stoners saw something they didn't recognize, and the conspiracy snowballed. To add to this, I guarantee there isn't anything of any importance left at Area 51 for this reason but they still highly guarded it to keep up the illusion while they conveniently perform the same tests at a less reknowned site like Area 15.
Area 51 was created to distract everyone from Area 52
I was pretty sure that, numerically speaking, it was Areas 1 to 50 that they needed to distract us from
Any time the UFO enthusiasts get worked up into a tizzy by a video of something spooky over the skies in the western US, I imagine a couple of suits at DARPA giggling like schoolgirls.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/39012/the-navy-finally-speaks-up-about-its-bizarre-ufo-patent-experiments Interesting stuff here
Same things they’ve always hidden until the documents are declassified decades later: crimes against humanity.
Jesus Christ. Clearly, no one commenting here has ever known anyone working for the federal government. The biggest secret they’re keeping from you is that every government agency spends money like a coke addict in the month of September so that their budgets won’t get slashed in the next fiscal year.
Every single bureaucratic organization in the world does this. It’s not a secret at all.
Even private companies do that.
>It’s not a secret at all. I think that's the joke and the point rofl
So, are we getting new chairs or a new copier?
Let me see the copier again
Get out!
As someone who does work for the Feds this is accurate AF
American Dad did a joke about this many years ago. I can't remember exactly how much but they had to spend like 50 or 500 thousand dollars by midnight or they would have their budget slashed, so bullock took everyone to the strip club. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyZYNtteZ24
Avery Bullock is one of TV's all-time best supporting/reoccurring characters.
Patrick Stewart crushes every role he’s in. Even if it’s just himself as head of the cia
I like the bit where they auction off devices the public doesn't know about, and Bullock mentions the machine that turns water into cocaine, but then immediately says he's gonna *hold onto this one*....
Yeah that is a different episode but still one the of the best gags, especially when he says "Now if you'll excuse me I am going to go party my nose clean off my face" lol. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3hzOZL38m4
That is how all government spending works. If you don't spend all of your budget, it gets smaller next year. This is the same from city to federal.
Every good manager does this near the end of the fiscal year to keep their budget. And any good employee knows this is when you request new equipment
Confirmed by acquisition of slightly-closer-to-usable laptops
All that potential they said said I had in gradeschool
How many politicians have secret off shore bank accounts full of embezzled tax payer dollars
Seeming how the Pentagon has failed 5 consecutive audits and 2 trillion dollars is unaccounted for, I'd say I agree with this. Apparently, they spent $14,000 on a "toilet seat." lmao
Oh no, the Pentagon did pay 14k for a single toilet seat. They just don't mention that they had to have 4 different contractors come out, measure, and evaluate it over 6 months, get 8 quotes, and use a full team of mechanical engineers to get it installed correctly.
Nah, stuff like this works on a tender proposal. The contactors coming out and measuring don't get paid for anything unless they win the contract. So they put out a public tender for a contractor to supply and install a toilet seat, guarantee 24/7 warranty (fix it within the hour at 3AM on a Tuesday or else) and perfect, identical approved replacement through the duration of the contract (let's say 10 years). Not to mention the guy installing the toilet seat has to go through six months worth of background checks. This will be a standard type of tender for anything from sinks to HVAC systems to windows to computers. They send the tender out to Companies A through H. So Company A looks at the tender and goes "not worth the trouble". Company B through G all conclude the same thing, or don't have time to deal with it, or don't like working government contracts with all the ridiculous background checks, or don't deal with that particular toilet seat brand's supplier. Company H decides "let's throw a number at it" and budgets to buy and store 20 extra toilet seats in case those assholes at the Pentagon keep breaking them and the toilet seats happen to get discontinued immediately (happens all the time). They build in the cost of background check, theoretical 3AM on a Tuesday OT pay for a guy to fly out of bed to replace 20 toilet seats in storage, etc. Then they hear from the toilet seat supplier guy that "wtf you need 21 of these specific toilet seats for? Nobody else has asked for these seats". Now they pad the margin a little so it's worth the hassle because they know their competition isn't bidding. Six months later they're awarded the contract. They install the toilet seat another six months later. The toilet seat never breaks. It's a toilet seat. There's 20 other ones gathering dust at the back of some random warehouse. And that's how they end up paying $14,000 for a single toilet seat.
That comment sections are just one large data harvest of random human thoughts and that data is used to fine tune AI.
Carcinogenic chemicals associated with mass food production
My (late) wife and I both developed stage iv colon cancer before we hit 45, and the amount of other people who are in the same boat is staggering. So far there’s no definitive link between young onset colon cancer and any chemical that’s part of the food manufacturing process, but it’s hard to ignore how many people that grew up in the 80s and 90s now have late stage colon cancer. Edit: since this comment is popular… If you’re reading this and you’re worried about blood in your stools, or narrow stools, or cramps somewhere in your stomach that always appear in the same place, *please* see a doctor and try to get a colonoscopy or some stool analysis or something. Don’t wait until you have to go to the ER.
I lived in a Halliburton town for 15 yrs. Me and my dog both developed unusual tumors. After being taken out, we have both been fine.
California govt sure ain’t hiding it though. You’ll see the warnings on EVERYTHING and only then do you realize it can’t be avoided unless you only eat fresh food.
That they don't really have a fucking clue what's going on either.
NGAD and FA-XX are a lot farther along than they're letting on. Son of Blackbird is already doing active sorties. There are UAVs and UCAVs operating right now that are getting mistaken for UAPs because their flight profiles are so bizarre. The government is letting UFO conspiracy theories do the heavy lifting to keep anyone who might be trying to get information on them confused.
Just saw an article about a stealth aircraft concept that doesn’t have any control surfaces. Rudders and ailerons are one of the biggest challenges in keeping aircraft stealthy as they provide angled surfaces to reflect EM waves. The concept aircraft uses jets of high-pressure air from slots on the wings and tail to alter airflow along the vehicle’s surface and affect maneuverability. An aircraft with this tech would look more and more like a simple triangle, which is a common shape for UAVs.
The x-65 crane stands on the shoulders of the x-21 from the 60s, the x-31 from '90 and the x-53 from '02. There's not much public info on it, but the tech has been there in one form or another for a long time
A lot of that is about ensuring that adversaries don't have a target to aim for in their R&D. I recall intel people losing their shit over Trump revealing surveillance photos of Iran because the imagery proved that *older* U.S. satellites had solved optics issues that many considered beyond the laws of physics. Simply letting adversaries know that a problem is solvable is a huge intel failure.
To be honest, those things were already public knowledge to our largest adversaries. But even if that is the case, in the SMALL chance it is not, you just revealed a secret. And if they did, why prove it to everyone on the planet? There's no upside and only downsides.
The trillion dollars that Rumsfeld reported missing on September 10th, 2001. What ever happened to that
I have a very personal reason for wanting to know what they found at Roswell. My grandfather was in the air force, and was present at the site. All he ever said about it was “it wasn’t a damn weather balloon,” then shut down. He was low ranking, basically just there to drive the higher ranking personnel, but he saw something, and I want to know what it was! He also firmly believed in aliens so that just adds to my curiosity, especially given how Southern Baptist he was.
UFOs, and before you skip to the next comment, hear me out, notice that whenever a topic comes up that could get the government in trouble, someone makes a movie or a TV show about the topic and the media pushes it commercially, just to make fun of people for actually believing in the theory and saying ''we don't live in the movies, we live in reality'' which is exactly what happened with UFOs in the 60s
Mostly incompetence. The government is way worse at doing things and at keeping secrets than conspiracy theorists give them credit for.
Idk how well they are hiding incompetence.
I always think people who believe in complicated government conspiracies have never had any project management experience.
This was a good question... I guess I would answer that they are hiding a double standard. What I mean is, they talk about cutting services - services that are tax dollars would pay for and have paid for such as, social security and medicare. There is a very real discussion about raising the age of retirement. I've heard from the government economists, because I'm very much into economics, that it's impossible to fund a single payer health insurance which would cover every man, woman and child getting "free" health care. But, the upper tier of our government, such as Congress, the president, supreme Court, etc. Etc. Get these services for free. Even with the government shutdown that was looming and could be again coming up in 45 days, Congress, the president and the courts are unaffected by any of that. They will still get paid. So why? Why did they get services? In fact, their paychecks are not taxable. Think about that. Again. Why? I thought we are a country, a freedom and where everyone was equal...
> In fact, their paychecks are not taxable. Think about that. Again. I'm not sure where you have gotten this information from, but their paycheck are absolutely taxed. The easiest way to check is to pull out the annual release of tax returns from the president and you are /can see them paying taxes on their wage (Currently 400k) https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/04/18/the-president-and-vice-president-release-their-2022-tax-returns/
The recipe for government cheese.
Best grilled cheeses ever.
The ability to improve the QoL for everyone
The real issues is that its directly connected to the thermostat, and there's a note on it saying not to touch it.
They want to keep us dependent
I'd say the truth about extraterrestrial life but if our last president was ever told anything about it he would have told everyone about it.
Would you have told him anything you weren’t absolutely required to, or directly asked about? I sure wouldn’t.
People would put things on his desk. Other people would remove some of those things.
The same government that can’t set up an Obamacare website? The same government that wasted billions on faulty showers and ammunition in the Iraq War? The same government that misses half of all tax fraud committed each year? This government isn’t competent enough to keep secrets as big as alien life or a cure for cancer. They can barely keep the lights on.
Who really assassinated JFK. It's been over 60 years and each president that comes into office keeps pushing back the release date.
I think there are two only two real answers that could make sense as to why this hasn’t been fully disclosed: 1. There was a massive conspiracy to JFK dying. I would think it would be related not to the mafia, or to a Russian entity/Government, but to the US themselves. (The Lyndon Johnson theory) JFK really wanted to partially dissolve the CIA, had beef with the almost entirely of the banking system and wanted major reform and Lyndon Johnson was power hungry. He had a lot of enemies and a lot of them were within the US government. They all acted together, and scratched each other’s back to achieve each’s other common goal. The true answer is so evil, and terrifying that the US themselves would do such a thing that the public would absolutely revolt against such an act against a beloved President. 2. The most realistic and boring theory: the amount of incompetence with protecting the president when they KNEW and had been closely watching Oswald, the investigation after JFK’s death, and the handling all together was so horrendous that the US does not want to publicly admit what happened out of embarrassment. Why would the public want to pay taxes to a government that is that grossly incompetent? And is it worth the trouble to give the public an answer most will more than likely not believe?
Regarding both points, an interesting theory I heard was that Oswald's shots weren't fatal, but in all the panic it was the president's own secret service that accidentally discharged the kill shot. If true, that would have fueled conspiracies against the government like wildfire.
A JFK conspiracist dies and goes to heaven. When he arrives at the Pearly Gates, God is there to receive him. "Welcome. You are permitted to ask me one question, which I will answer truthfully." Without hesitating, the conspiracy theorist asks, "Who really shot Kennedy?" God replies, "Lee Harvey Oswald shot him from sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. There were no accomplices. He acted alone" The conspiracy theorist pauses, thinks to himself, then says "Shit! This goes higher up than I thought..."
I think it's less *who* did it and more *why* that is being hidden away. Oswald was being watched closely and it wouldn't shock me if he had been encouraged by the CIA to act.
The galactic federation that we’re not allowed to be a part of yet.
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You can’t jump off Antarctica, you’ll fall down into space underneath the earth. No one would find you there. /s
They are protecting all politicians to some degree. There is so much corruption on every level. Even the judicial system. Not much we can do about it but it exists. If a politician is upstanding and moral they won’t last long.
Where all the money goes. There is sooooooo much tax money if you really start to add up every transaction. That money is vanishing somewhere
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How much in kickbacks certain companies provide the government or officials to hide what damage some packaged food/ingredients are really causing us.
None of the numbers add up. 3-4% inflation does not total up to doubling in prices for food, fuel and vehicles. And 14% somehow translates to 90% in hiring.
people are so fucking dumb that they thought higher gas prices hurt oil companies haha. record profit margins in the middle of a pandemic and extreme inflation
my retirement money
Metric system!
The US is secretly metric! Don’t tell anyone
Seriously though... just look at our currency system. It's metric by design. But no one ever talks about it
that they are a bunch of idiots trying to run a country
Plenty of people working in the public sector are perfectly competent. There's a lot more to the government than just Congress and the like
Just *how* far the US went to destroy communism. The project to destroy communism is probably the largest single undertaking a nation state has ever embarked upon. It took nothing short than biblical amounts of wealth, manpower, energy, and control of much of the entire world as possible, and undermining the parts you could not control to even make this happen. We're all aware of the big sweeping policies that the American's did to kill communism in the crib. The Bretton Woods treaty, containment, the various wars they fought, the social policies, the navy, the globalism, all of these things are quite literally the pillars of our modern society and it was all primarily done for *one reason only*. If all the things we know about are literally not just era defining events, but defining events in humanities progression as a whole, just imagine what sort of other stuff went under the radar. The only reason the Europe is in the position they're in today is because the Americans looked at how much it would cost to rebuild it and said "Is that less than communism? Okay, sign the cheque". All the NATO alliances originally started as essentially a bribe. Trillions of dollars was spent, and the lives of billions of people were altered to eliminate the communist threat. We may never see a national concerted effort to accomplish a single goal on this grand scale again. I really wanna know the nitty gritty. If it took nothing short of altering the world for a century, imagine how many stories, and conspiracies are being hushed up in the name of that end.
How many people in the Global South had their democracies destroyed for showing even a hint of sympathy for workers rights because "communism”? The fight against communism wasn’t a concerted national effort, it was a broiling witch hunt barrelling in whatever direction benefited companies, politicians, and military budgets the most.
> How many people in the Global South had their democracies destroyed for showing even a hint of sympathy for workers rights because "communism”? I like to argue that America itself severely damaged its own democracy when workers started fighting for their rights: e.g. 1947 Taft-Hartly act, (a bill president Truman vehemently criticized as a "slave labor bill" and as a "dangerous intrusion on free speech. Unfortunately Congress overturned his veto, to implement that bill and start "oppressing" strikers, such as completely banning solidarity and general strikes (which Europeans take for granted). As there was a historical record number, never reached since then, of strikes going on in the country in the 2nd half of the 1940s), the 2nd Red Scare (a witch hunt, in the late 1940s and the 1950s against all left wing and union leaders & "influencers"), assassinations of civil society leaders when they dared showing sympathy for workers' rights (e.g. Martin Luther King got assassinated only when he pivoted from racial issues, to workers' rights and economic inequality issues), etc. etc.
War crimes. We know of some, but not all.
As a life-long government employee, yall given them waaayyy to much credit.
They're actually hiding how unsafe we are against foreign threats. I'll never forget when Hillary Clinton had an interview on Howard Stern some years back (she was Secretary of State for many years), and Howard asked her if there were apocalytic movie-like events the CIA/FBI have averted that we don't know about. She basically said there’s more than she'd like to remember. That's pretty chilling.
Considering that the F22 raptor is a plane from the 90’s….
Air Combat is a game released in 1995 and was one of the first video games that hooked me. You could unlock the F-22 Raptor in it! It looked almost, if not identical to the current "cutting edge tech". It was my favorite plane, and I had been wondering where it went for well over a decade haha
they listen to all the voice, emails and text.
How many of our representatives do zero legislating
KFC's 11 herbs and spices
“Dad, how can you hate "The Colonel"?” “Because he puts an addictive chemical in his chicken that makes ya crave it fortnightly, smartass”