Ann's Mega Dub

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

The unqualified Sean Duffy tries to blame Pete Buttigieg

Accountability is something the whiny cry babies of MAGA can't accept. They just lie and blame everyone else. James Liddell (Independent) reports:

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy tried to shift the blame for a string of recent air disasters onto his Democratic predecessor, Pete Buttigieg, in the wake of cutting hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration personnel.

Duffy, confirmed to lead the department in the Senate late last month, revealed on Monday that the Trump administration fired “less than 400” of the FAA’s 45,000 employees. He also claimed all of them were serving probationary periods.

The layoffs took place against a backdrop of three fatal U.S. air disasters since Donald Trump’s inauguration last month, in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and Alaska – with another commercial plane carrying 80 people flipping over upon a crash landing at Canada’s Toronto Pearson International Airport on Monday.

His response came after Buttigieg, who served as transportation secretary in the Biden administration, took issue with the dismissals and publicly called out Duffy on X on Monday.

“How many FAA personnel were just fired? What positions? And why?,” he wrote.

Rather than directly address the question, Duffy, a former reality star and Fox News host, took a swipe at Buttigieg and suggested his implementation of outdated equipment, laissez-faire leadership style and so-called “mismanagement” were to blame for recent incidents.

Oh, go back to TV, you failure. This is what we get from Chump: A bunch of unqualified cabinet members

This is C.I.'s "The Snapshot:"

Tuesday, February 18, 2025. Oh, look, while the DSA attacks actual Democrats, they ignore reality and what we can actually accomplish right now, if we roll up our sleeves and get to work.

If you ever not grasped why the DSA should stick to Socialism and stop pretending that they're Democrats, look no further than political closet case Sam Seder. Maybe when Socialist Michael Brooks was alive, he could strategize? I have no idea. But Sam's just another worthless JACOBIN reading Socialist.

He's done yet another attack ad (segment) on THE MAJORITY REPORT attacking House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries because . . . Hakeem's a Democrat. Sam found time for the bad author "Media: OWNED finds Eoin Higgins owned by bad journalism" -- an author who is a Socialist but managed to write a book about US politics that labels MAGA, Republicans, Libertarians, The Tea Party and "the left."

No where in the book does the Socialist identify himself as that nor all of his circle-jerk friends who are also Socialists. It's just "the left." They fake ass you over and over. Not by accident. They get together and make Cenk and Kyle heroes and talk about "Justice Democrats" which are really "Justice Socialists." I'm hearing from people in Greg Casar's district who are very upset to learn that they thought they were voting for a Democrat when they weren't. Greg might want to get ahead of that before mid-terms.

Mike took on a Socialist front last night. COMMON DREAMS -- not a Democratic site -- and Socialist Jake Johnson were pimping Aaron Regunberg's attack on Democrats. Because that's what Socialists do and that's what Aaron is. (Though he did run as a Democrat last year -- after two previous failed election cycles where he didn't.) Aaron's DSA and yet Jake Johnson didn't think you needed to know that.

Why could that be?

Maybe the answer's to be found in Alex Seitz-Wald's NBC NEWS report from 2023? Let's see:

The tensions are familiar to any student of radical movements in history. And ideological movements often stagnate when their allied party wins the White House, and the unifying effect of a common enemy is replaced by the inherent messiness of governing.

Justice Democrats, the insurgent group that recruited progressives like Ocasio-Cortez, slashed its staff this year after a mixed record in Democratic congressional primaries, while prominent leftists have used words like “crisis” and “purgatory” as they debate their future. The problems facing far-left groups have led some to focus more on organizing among labor unions and tenants, rather than inside electoral politics.

The national DSA has criticized and even threatened to expel its own members elected to Congress for apostasy on issues like support for Israel and a 2022 vote to end a railroad strike.

In July, state Rep. Mike Connelly left his Massachusetts DSA chapter after he was threatened with expulsion for, among other things, endorsing Democratic Gov. Maura Healy’s re-election and appearing at an event with the Prince and Princess of Wales.

“The ‘charges’ were, essentially, that I demonstrated a willingness to work with and support elected leaders and activists who are delivering results for working class and marginalized communities. I am guilty as charged, and proudly so,” Connelly said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

[. . .]

Renée Paradis, a member of the party's National Political Committee said opinion inside the DSA ranges widely, including those who want the group to be more active inside the Democratic Party.

But the consensus coming out of the convention, she said, remains that DSA should keep running candidates in Democratic primaries while building its own outside campaign infrastructure.

"Most working-class voters still heavily identify with the Democratic Party," said Paradis. "Bernie’s campaigns and DSA’s own electoral campaigns have shown that we can build socialist power while tactically using the Democratic Party’s ballot line.”

See, it's planned. They plan to rat f**k the Democratic Party.

We are not on the same page. They want to run Democrats out of Congress and replace them with Socialists posing as Democrats. They want to run Democrats in Congress out of leadership and replace them with Socialists.

Remember that when they're attacking Hakeem.

Remember that and remember what they're not doing as they try to get you to join their attack on Hakeem to take him out of Democratic Party leadership. You might need to read THIRD's "Editorial: Congress needs to do its job and we need to do our job" first. When you do, grasp that they have refused to tell you to target Republicans.

They have refused to talk to, for example, Texas voters and remind them that John Cornyn and Ted Cruz are not "Republicans" as much as they are US senators. Their party identification shouldn't matter, they are there to represent all of Texas. And campaigns should have been mobilized to bombard them with the message "NO" on Donald Chump's nominees.

You have to drop back to 1992 for when my state had a Republican in the US Senate. But that's not the case for most states. Equally true, you don't have to do an e-mail saying, "Teddy, you're handsome and I love that fat belly even though I'm a Democrat" -- you don't have to mention your party identification. You are a constituent and if enough constituents raise hell -- regardless of party i.d., a senator will be prompted to listen.

The Sodalists hiding in their political closets are a lot like closeted actors -- constrained and unconvincing. Which is why they can't really participate in a worthy manner or make any real contributions.

But Democrats? We've been here before and we've pushed back and we've won. We did it when Reagan was in the White House, we did it when Bully Boy Bush was in the White House.

Socialists are the reason Chump gets away with so much. They threw everything at him including the kitchen sink in his first term. Everything was the worst, every Tweet the most offensive thing in the world. It didn't look good to swing voters. It looked like everything got attacked. Our problems are policy differences and vision differences. Senator Chuck Schumer rightly realizes that and that's why he makes the statements he does that send Socialist into a tizzy.

This version of Donald Chump is even more outrageous and unmoored than the previous one.

And we need to convey that to the American people.

But instead, we have Kyle and Sam and the other Socialists posing as Democrats and urging us to 'fight back' against Democrat Hakeem Jeffries.

DSA doesn't even have 100,000 members in this country. There's a reason for that: They don't know what the f**k they're doing.

Democrats know what they're doing.

As noted in the video, Chump's has a 46% approval rating and a 48% disapproval rating.

Chump is in his first 100 days .

What does that mean?

The Socialist closet cases can't or won't tell you. (To repeat SEP and PSL are Socialists and, unlike DSA, they don't hide in political closets. My beef is with the posers trying to pass themselves off as Democrats while they rat f**k the party.)

No president of the United States gets a bigger pass from the press and the people than they do at any other time. We're not even at day 30 right now.

Republicans in the Senate can do whatever they want right now because they're under the mistaken belief that Chump is so popular. They can skirt their legal obligations -- and have -- because they're too stupid to grasp that this is the high point. They're apparently also scared from violent threats that MAGA is making against them. They better be reporting those threats.

They are craven and they are letting Chump boss them around. Because they think he's so damn popular and that the MAGAs contacting their offices represent America. MAGAs do not represent America and that's why Democrats especially need to be contacting any Republican in the Senate that is from their state. It needs to be made clear that -- beyond the echo chamber -- people are outraged.

I'm arguing -- and have been for some time -- that we focus on the Senate. The reason being it's a statewide office. Susan Collins, for example, can't afford to lose the Democrats who've voted for her in the past. If you want to focus on the House, have at it. I think it's easier to build resistance in the Senate because the House exists as it does due to gerrymandering.

But that's what we need to be talking about. We don't need to be signing off on DSA's efforts to take out Democrat Hakeem Jeffries.

And that's not, "Don't you criticize him!" Call him out all you want. But grasp that he's not going anywhere and that this effort is about trying to take him out of leadership to replace him with a Socialist. Yet again, while Democrats fight to save the country, Socialists hiding in political closets are working overtime to take out Democrats.

By the way, everyone's e-mailing the public account about this or that takedown of TYT's Ana. I'm not interested. Not until the YOUTUBER tells the truth. Ana's a Socialist who hid in a political closet. Again, her end goal was destruction of the US system. That's why, when Chump offered that, it was so easy for her to join MAGA. It's not an accident. And if, at this late date, you're calling out Ana and not noting that she was a Socialist, that she was part of JACOBIN, etc, etc, I don't see you as brave. I don't see you as a truth teller. I see you as a trickster.

Chump is outrageous and he is destroying our government. That's reality. And it's the reality that Americans are seeing and that reality is going to destroy him.

Farmers are in an uproar. Ben Palen (KANSAS REFLECTOR) reports:

Back in November, I wrote a column for Kansas Reflector that discussed the likely adverse effects of President Trump’s proposed tariffs on U.S. farmers.

The piece noted that 398 million acres of cropland has been added to the mix around the world since the start of this century, notably in tropical regions such as Brazil and India. There is increasing competition for U.S. farmers in export markets. The United States alone cannot absorb all that we produce here.

Many farmers voted for Trump because he promised less regulation and greater prosperity for America’s farmers. The hard truth is that, like most of the folks who voted for Trump, farmers failed to do their homework about the reality of the new administration. All of this has occurred in the context of higher input costs and tight margins for virtually all crops.

We are now living and working in an environment where the only constant is chaos. Chaos produces uncertainty, and that leads to loss of trust. The buyers of U.S. farm products are not going to deal with nations that cannot be trusted. There are plenty of options in today’s world for those buyers to bypass the United States. Why on God’s green earth would they put up with the insanity that we have in Washington now?

It is almost laughable that some Republicans have come to the defense of Trump’s proposed tariffs, and that some of those same Republicans have promised to help the farmers who feel the impact.

Really?

We have an unelected multibillionaire who in effect bought the Trump presidency now running amok in Washington. On the one hand, we see unprecedented efforts (that is, without the advice and consent of the Congress) by some entity called DOGE to slash government spending, and on the other we hear some of Trump’s cronies promise aid for farmers. The two cannot be squared. Setting aside your political views, this is an unprecedented assault on the Constitution and the separation of powers.

Americans are seeing just how unethical he truly is and how he just lies to get his way. They're reminded of it when they go grocery shopping or fill up a tank of gas. The prices have not come down, they have gone up and he's a liar, exposed at every check out counter. He's unethical and running scams when he should be helping the American people. AP notes:

Donald Trump has leaned into his unofficial role as the "crypto president " in ways that can both help the crypto industry and enrich himself and his family.

Once a skeptic of cryptocurrencies, Trump has made a complete reversal and embraced digital currencies in a way no other elected official has done. He's promised to enact crypto-friendly policies and make the U.S. "the world capital" of digital assets.

He's also attached the Trump name to a crypto token and other crypto-themed products. The cryptocurrency industry, which spent heavily to help Trump win last year's election, has expressed mixed feelings about some of his crypto ventures.

Critics have said the ventures are ripe for abuse by people seeking Trump's influence. Trump put his investments and assets in a trust managed by his children and has pledged not to play any role in managing his companies while president.

With more on that topic, Jai Hamid (CRYPTOPOLITAN) reports:

In a mind-blowing interview with Coffeezilla, Kelsier’s Hayden Davis, the self-proclaimed launch strategist behind multiple political meme coin launches, openly admitted to insider trading, sniper wallets, and market manipulation—implicating presidents Donald Trump and Javier Milei as well as First Lady Melania Trump.

He detailed how meme coins like LIBRA were rigged from the start, how insiders had pre-launch access to tokens, and how every major launch was nothing more than a calculated financial game. “This is an insiders’ game. It’s an unregulated casino,” Hayden said, confirming that early buyers at a private dinner in Washington, D.C., were given access to Trump’s token before the public.

“I thought some of these meme coins could turn into something real,” Hayden added. “But the reality is, it’s just a game. The people who know how to play win. The rest lose.” Mind you this is the guy who launched the $LIBRA token that wiped $4.6 billion from the market in six hours.

Hayden shared that before Trump’s token launch, a small group of investors were granted exclusive pre-sale access at a valuation of $500 million. According to him, these buyers were let in before the contract address was made public, so that they could purchase at rock-bottom prices before the retail frenzy.

“They gave people special access to buy in before it launched,” Hayden said. “That’s what I was told.” When pressed on where this happened, he named Washington, D.C., as the location where the deal allegedly took place.

Melania’s token, Hayden admitted, followed the same playbook. He was directly involved in the launch and confirmed that his team sniped it. The goal, according to him, was to counteract external snipers, but in reality, it meant insiders once again took the best entry positions before the public.

“We weren’t the big sniper,” Hayden said. “That’s what we were trying to avoid.” But on-chain data tells a different story. A wallet tied to his operation received $1.5 million worth of Melania’s token from an address labeled ‘Melania D Liquidity 2.0.’ The tokens were then dumped, crushing the price and leaving retail investors with massive losses.

Bully Boy Bush was supposed to be Teflon coated but Democrats worked hard and exposed his true nature. We're doing the same with Chump. But we're not being helped by the DSAers who are more concerned with pushing AOC higher up the leadership chain than they are with saving the country.

Senator Elizabeth Warren's office issued the following:

Identifying potential violations of strict data protection laws, senators demand information on DOGE’s infiltration of IRS systems

Text of Letter (PDF)

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee, wrote to acting IRS Commissioner Douglas O’Donnell warning that personnel affiliated with Elon Musk infiltrating the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) systems could be in violation of strict taxpayer data protection laws that prohibit both the improper disclosure and inspection of Americans’ tax returns. The senators demanded copies of any memorandum granting IRS system access to any Musk-affiliated personnel, as well as justifications and records related to the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) inspections of taxpayer data. The senators also sought to learn whether DOGE personnel have accessed or interfered with any work by the IRS Criminal Investigation division or moved any IRS data, including tax return information, from IRS systems to external servers or recipients.

According to public reports, the White House is pressuring the IRS to agree to give software engineers working for Elon Musk at DOGE broad access to IRS systems, property, and datasets which include the private tax return information of hundreds of millions of American citizens and businesses. Potential access includes the IRS’ Integrated Data Retrieval System (IDRS), which would give Elon Musk and his associates access to private bank records and other confidential, legally protected information belonging to American taxpayers.

“Even if individuals affiliated with DOGE are employed by Treasury, their access to tax information may not be legal,” wrote the senators. “For inspection of taxpayer information to be lawful, it must be made to or by an authorized person for an authorized purpose … To date, no information on DOGE employees or any others executing orders on Musk’s behalf have revealed any clear, stated purpose as to why they need access to return information, whether they have followed all required laws to gain access to IRS systems, and what steps the IRS has taken to ensure that inspection of tax return is contained to authorized personnel and not disclosed to any unauthorized parties.”

“No executive order requiring agency heads to provide DOGE personnel access to IRS records or information technology systems supersedes the federal tax code,” the lawmakers continued. “Software engineers working for Musk seeking to gain access to tax return information have no right to hoover up taxpayer data and send that data back to any other part of the federal government and may be breaking the law if they are doing so.”

“We are also extremely concerned that DOGE personnel meddling with IRS systems in the middle of tax filing season could, inadvertently or otherwise, cause breakdowns that may delay the issuance of tax refunds indefinitely. Any delay in refunds could be financially devastating to millions of Americans who plan their budgets around timely refunds every spring,” the senators concluded.

The senators requested the IRS provide clarity, including copies of memorandums, on the decision to grant Musk and DOGE access to IRS systems and a list of specific people who would have access to these systems, by February 21, 2025.

Senator Warren’s leadership has been instrumental in Democrats’ fight against Elon Musk’s takeover of government agencies:

On February 14, 2025, the Treasury and federal government watchdogs announced, following pressure from Sen. Warren, that they would open an investigation into Treasury Secretary Bessent granting Elon Musk and DOGE access to critical government payment systems.
On February 13, 2025, after reports revealed Elon Musk would take advantage of loopholes in federal ethics laws to avoid publicly disclosing his financial conflicts of interest, Sen. Warren led several Democrats in a letter demanding Musk publicly reveal how he could stand to profit from his role in the Trump administration.
On February 10, 2025, following Elon Musk and Project 2025 architect Russ Vought attempting to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Sen. Warren spoke at the CFPB headquarters and vowed to fight back, saying “Congress built (the CFPB), and no one other than Congress — not Donald Trump, not Elon Musk, no one – can fire the financial cops.
On February 7, 2025, following Elon Musk and DOGE forcing their way into the Department of Education, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Minority Leader Schumer (D-N.Y.) led a coalition of Democrats in demanding the Department of Education launch an investigation into Musk and DOGE’s access to federal student loan data.
On February 5, 2025, as part of Senate Democrats 30-hour hold on Russ Vought’s nomination for Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke out against the serious consequences of Mr. Vought’s leadership and underscored the danger of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s power grab.
On February 5, 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren joined Democrats’ demand for the Senate Committees on Finance and Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs to hold hearings into how Elon Musk and DOGe gained access to systems that control payments to millions of American citizens.
On February 4, 2025, following Treasury Secretary Bessent’s inadequate response to his role in Musk and DOGE accessing critical government payment systems, Senator Elizabeth Warren pressed him to provide the American public with answers.
On February 4, 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren called on the Government Accountability Office to urgently investigate Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s decision to grant access to sensitive government payment systems to Elon Musk and other DOGE employees.
On February 4, 2025, at a rally in front of the Department of the Treasury, Senator Elizabeth Warren called Elon Musk’s government power grab an attempt to “seiz(e) power away from the American people.”
On February 3, 2025, at a press conference with Senate Democrats, Senator Elizabeth Warren sounded the alarm on the danger of Elon Musk having access to millions of Americans’ sensitive personal information, calling it an attempt to “take over this government to make it work better for themselves and worse for everyone else.”
On February 3, 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren blasted Secretary Bessent for allowing Musk and DOGE access to the critical Treasury systems and the sensitive personal information in them.

###

New content at THIRD:

The following sites updated:

Monday, February 17, 2025

Alien Musk cries in his pillow

BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX & THOMAS FRIEDMAN IS A GREAT MAN & ANN'S MEGA DUB & THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS & THE COMMON ILLS -- THE KOOL AID TABLE

BIG NEWS COMING OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE AS CONVICTED FELON DONALD CHUMP SPOKE WITH THESE REPORTERS FROM THE PRIMARY WHITE HOUSE TOILET TO SAY THAT HIS BOY-TOY ALIEN MUSK "AIN'T RUNNING S**T" AS CHUMP PUSHED OUT ONE.

"ALIEN IS NOTHING BUT A SENIOR ADVISOR TO ME," A GRUNTING CHUMP DECLARED, "I BUILT UP HIS EGO BECAUSE HE PERFORMS BETTER BUT, HONESTLY, HE'S JUST THE LATEST WHORE I'VE SLEPT WITH. WHEN I SEE A BOY LIKE ALIEN, I JUST KNOW I CAN GRAB THEM BY THEIR PEE-PEE AND DO WHATEVER I WANT."

BUT ELON'S IS THE LEADER OF DOGE!

"DOGE? DOUGH-JAH? IT' DAWG-EE. DOGGY. THAT'S HOW I LIKE TO TAKE MY SWEET BOY ALIEN -- DOGGY STYLE!"

WITH THAT, CHUMP GOT OFF THE TOILET, WASHED HIS HANDS AND HEADED FOR THE DOOR AS WE ASKED IF HE DIDN'T PLAN TO FLUSH?

"FLUSH? AND TAKE AWAY ALIEN MUSK'S NIGHT TIME SNACK?"

FROM THE TCI WIRE:

Donald Chump and Alien Musk continue their attack on the US government. Foreign born Alien prefers to destroy the US system because he misses the apartheid he embraced in South Africa and Donald Chump is just too stupid to know what he's doing.

Chump demonstrated that stupidity repeatedly over the weekend. For example? Doina Chiacu (REUTERS) explains Chump posted to social media today, "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law." No, that's not true, it's never been true. Chiacu also notes that Chump is claiming that he survived an assassination attempt because God wants him to save the country. Need another? Rebecca Schneid (TIME) reports:

To mark Valentine’s Day, the White House posted a meme across its X, Instagram, and Facebook social media accounts. The post included a new take on the popular “roses are red, violets are blue” refrain. But in lieu of a traditional love poem, the White House instead came up with a rhyme that targeted illegal immigration.

“Roses are red, violets are blue, come here illegally, and we’ll deport you,” the text of the Valentine’s Day message read. Against a pink backdrop, the poem was accompanied by the faces of President Donald Trump and his border czar, Tom Homan. The caption read “Happy Valentines Day,” with a red heart emoji.

Various organizations have since spoken out to condemn the post.

Voto Latino, an organization that works to engage Latino communities in the voting process, called the post “offensive and divisive.”

“This post was deliberately crafted to provoke and sow division, but the struggles of immigrant families are not a joke,” the organization said. “Using a lighthearted holiday to demean and target communities is not only irresponsible—it is beneath the dignity of the presidency.”

The immigrant harming this country is Alien Musk. Ed Mazza (HUFFINGTON POST) reports:

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) on Sunday sarcastically admitted she was wrong about a key part of President Donald Trump’s MAGA platform.

Trump has frequently claimed that immigrants were taking jobs from Americans, at times insisting that more than 100% of new jobs were going to immigrants.

“There’s an immigrant taking people’s jobs,” Crockett admitted in a post on social media. “His name is Elon Musk.”

Tech billionaire Musk, who was born in South Africa, has been leading Trump’s effort to shrink the government and cut spending, which has led to agencies being gutted.

Crockett pointed out the impact, direct and indirect, that Musk’s cuts are already having around the nation:

“He’s snatching farms, government jobs (even those in which they manage our national security), and definitely those whose jobs are to root out fraud (inspector generals), & those that are keeping us safe (FAA), meals on wheels workers, head start, and the list goes on, so I’ll be the bigger person and admit to MAGA that I was wrong when I said immigrants wouldn’t take our jobs. You were 1000 percent correct.”

Crockett said earlier this month that even some Republicans in Congress weren’t happy with Musk and were secretly rooting for him to fail.