No, the "British Empire" was the 19th century and French was the international language until World War II. After we dominated in that war put the UN in New York, and our media and culture took over the world, English became the language of diplomacy, trade, and entertainment. |
Yeah my husband arrives by 6am. If I hear him when the baby gets up at 530 hes running late...and there's been plenty of days he has worked 12 hours or more. |
Nobody tried to clean it up via lawful means. Or if they did they got shut down. I’m not happy about any of this but what do the democrats expect? They didn’t bother to address the issue. Heck they chose money over democracy. |
This open-letter on DCUM quoting Lord of the Rings will definitely have a big impact on the work DOGE is doing. Well done! |
Because of our military prowess, especially our navy. |
Nope. The Congress should be the ones to fix any wasteful spending. That is their job. But it is the GOP CONGRESSPEOPLE who have refused to work on this for decades. Just obstruction, obstruction, obstruction. It has been under GOP POTUSes when the deficit has risen to its highest levels. They cannot sustain their tax cuts. They are beholden to industries like big oil instead of the American people. The problems with waste are at the feet of the GOP. |
Earning a middle class living doing work that is valuable is offensive to techno-feudalists. |
+1, the interface is less functional and it doesn't actually provide people with the useful features we used to want. No one really uses it anymore. Musk also didn't alienate advertisers. He alienated users, including the people who created the content people most wanted to see and read. He didn't seem to understand -- that *was* the product. The platform mattered, but not as much as the content, which people were providing for free! And when those creators stopped using Twitter or left altogether, so too did their followers. I used to go on Twitter 10-20x a day. Actually didn't use it for political content much except maybe right around an election. I read it for local news and events, to follow writers I liked, to discuss my main hobbies and to connect to people with similar passions to mine in the arts. If I was a young person joining "X" today, I couldn't do any of that. Those people aren't even on the platform or if they are, they don't post much. And when they do post, the odds of me seeing their posts are slim because the interface is not designed to show me what I want, it's designed to show me what Musk wants me to see. And he doesn't care about my interest in Dutch painting, knitting, or road trip photography. Musk is completely detached from his humanity. That might make it easier for him to figure out to more efficiently build an electric vehicle or a rocket. But by being less human, less connected to his fellow humans, by being totally lacking in empathy, he misunderstands why something like Twitter, or the US federal government, exists in the first place. These are not efficient machines. Twitter was a community. The United States is a country, a culture, a society. You can make aspects of these things more efficient. There is always room for improvement. But the Silicon Valley ethos of breaking it so you can rebuild it better doesn't work with something that is, in its nature, a form of humanity. You cannot break humanity and then rebuild it better. A human is not a machine. |
Not smart enough, given they are participating in illegal schemes. |
So removing a logo that has multiple colors in it because it's too similar to the color scheme of the "gay rainbow" aids in eliminating government waste? Or is it creating a waste? |
+100 . All of my family members who are federal workers work more than the required hours and aren't eligible for overtime pay because of their pay grade. They are professional, responsible and passionate about the work they do. This constant accusing ALL government workers of being lazy is getting old and trite. Surely there must be a more humane way to keep the talented people who are invested in their jobs and not insult them by calling them "low productivity." |
You are already blaming the democrats. No, this is on you, MAGA. |
Agreed. The sad thing is that of course there is waste in federal government. Of course there are people or even divisions that are not productive or get mired in bureaucracy. There are also myriad inefficiencies that result from bad processes, inadequate or obsolete technology, or cultural issues. This is true in any organization, much less one as large as the fed. If Trump and Musk approached the project of identifying waste in government and fixing it, with curiosity and optimism, I actually think (in theory) they could do good. But they are starting from the premise that federal workers are de facto lazy and federal regulations are de facto bad, and are making cuts and seizing control based on to on evidence of waste or inefficiency, but political ideology. Is USAID a particularly wasteful agency? Nope, and in fact because it attracts people who are particularly passionate about the work that it does, you find remarkably hardworking people there. In terms of ROI, it's very hard to calculate the benefit it has to the US in terms of spreading goodwill and encouraging democratic, pro-US ideals abroad. Yet this is where Musk began. It tells you everything you need to know. |
there are (were) three pillars of our successful foreign policy: defense, diplomacy, and development we just tossed out one and are blowing up another |
“Work” |