Well, I'm grateful to the interior designers for the effort to contain costs by shopping at Temu, Salvation Army, and Eastern Market & Georgetown Flea Market. (Silver linings)
Seeking input on my idea to change my party from Democrat to Republican for the sole purpose of watering down MAGA and lending support to non-MAGA Republicans (while still Voting Blue No Matter Who in the General Elections.)
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Well, I'm grateful to the interior designers for the effort to contain costs by shopping at Temu, Salvation Army, and Eastern Market & Georgetown Flea Market. (Silver linings)
I used to say the US was slowly yielding it's global lead in all areas. I've now realized it's happening much more rapidly than I originally thought.
It's been a long time for my since-retired ass, but I do believe it's a hard 30-day line - and it's 30 days in one location. Some military/civilians have "multiple location" orders where they don't stay in one place for very long, so the 30 day rule never kicks in.
I'm so 2025 lazy I don't check my doorstep for my delivery - I check the online tracking status.
Well, when crazy people say crazy things, the contrast is pretty unremarkable.
RULE ABOUT AMERICAN FLAGS: If you burn the fabric part, you're looking at jail. But it you use the pole part to assault a police officer, you get a presidential pardon, praise, and some cash.
The dude who freely talked about going around grabbing women by the BEEEEEEEP doesn't get to lecture us about placing limitations on free speech and sending people to jail for violating his opinion.
Well, his career is on the clock......
***Ronald Reagan has entered the chat*** 👍
MAGA is having conniptions on this one over on the former Blue Bird place! 🤣 They're posting "This is so gay", blah blah blah. Well.... **DUH**. Tell me you've never had brunch in Dupont Circle without telling me you've never had brunch in Dupont Circle. What a bunch of clowns.
I'm sure it isn't related to the USA's latest mass murder shooting, but Thoughts&Prayers futures are going through the roof. I even heard Susan Collins is concerned! Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have gone into private conference to draft a tersely-worded statement.
Dunno about that. Some people had trouble with travel cards being declined for legit uses because the authorization was flagged by a well-intentioned but poorly-programmed algorithm (usually a word in the merchant's name).
Yeah, I remember getting the nastygrams about charging lunch on a personal card while TDY. It didn't sit well, esp with the Hooters lunch crowd. 🤣
All of those pictures of Guardsmen standing around in Union Station or the Dupont Circle Krispy Kreme finally struck a nerve with someone in the chain of command. Guardsmen working as landscapers and litter patrol isn't a huge improvement on image.
OMG - we had a guy who maxed out his GSA travel card, THEN took a part-time job he was working WHILE on the clock. His entire work plan documentation was blank except for a few falsified entries. He was allowed to resign in lieu of criminal prosecution, which I thought was a VERY gracious deal.
M&IE Sidenote: DHS IA did an investigation of one of our field offices. These idiots were claiming ~$70 airport parking, "lost" receipt. Turns out, they were getting rides to the airport & pocketing the unauthorized money. Lost their $60k+ jobs for the price of a good dinner. Idiots.
How are the times from DC Union Station to NY Penn Station? When I lived near DC, Acela only got you to Penn Station a very short time ahead of the regular Amtrak trains, but cost significantly more. I usually ended up on the US Airways shuttle from DCA to LGA.
PS - You're allowed up to the maximum lodging rate, or actual lodging rate, whichever is lower. Sometimes we had to get "actual expenses authorized" if hotels were super-expensive. If lodging is provided, your cost is $0, so you get $0.
That's true. In Saudi Arabia we got "field rate" per diem as all meals were provided. It was like $2.50/day to cover uniform care. Also, once a TDY goes over 30 days in one location, you're expected to secure lower-cost long-term accommodations & therefore the per diem rate is reduced substantially.
Aaaaaamen! Her years in Eurythmics was near-wasted. She was the forerunner of George Michael's experience in Wham! (Forerunner by one year!) Just a bit of "Don't Let it Bring You Down" in the movie American Beauty was chilling! www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cIR...
Bananarama had a couple of songs that were fun in the moment & they had a memorable, fun name. They're the Chevy Fuze of the 80s - not built to last. My musical bane was the Spice Girls - 10% talent, 90% production.
Theft & black market resale has been a hallmark of business in Russia for so long, it's culturally ingrained. When the CCCP collapsed, foreign businesses were chomping at the bit to get into Moscow. Most retreated when this black market cost became too much to bear.
I want to thank Bibi Netanyahu for opening my eyes to his true nature. And while most of this barbarism is attributable to him, it's still the IDF that's carrying it out. I still support the seemingly fictional two-state solution, but Israel's clearing of Gaza is well across the war crimes line.
That's a good point. The evening news doesn't always have to be full of doom and gloom. That's what Twitter/X is here for. 🤣
You bet. 37 years of dealing with travel vouchers & fighting Accounting & Finance over proper location rates while often moving from location to location while on a TDY trip. GSA also sets the maximum allowable lodging/hotel rates. (Secret Service often has to pay a higher rate at Trump properties.)
Per diem is set by the Government Services Administration (GSA) and is formula-derived on a geographic basis each fiscal year. FY26 rates have been posted along with the current FY25 rates at: www.gsa.gov/travel/plan-... (Aug is typically a slow month in DC, d2 Congress break)
FEMA is not a direct "first responder" agency. It coordinates the deployment of scarce resources based on greatest need and impact. No FEMA? State & local gov't will openly compete for scarce resources, bidding prices up, with the poorest areas most adversely affected.
You signed up to defend your country from... litterbugs in the nation's capital? Imagine what your unit could be doing for your neighbors back in your home state. Isn't that the primary mission of the National Guard? Trump's breaking federal law enforcement agencies, too - FBI, ICE, HSI, CBP, etc.
Well, thanks to the Trump Administration's 10% stake in Intel, whoever Intel does business with, the United States now does business with.
The line I like is "I don't care if you're gay, just don't show it" from a person who has a pic of their spouse on their desk, wears a wedding band, never has to swap genders in overheard discussions, and frequently cuts out early because they MUST be present for little Susy's 3rd grade pageant.
Reminds me of the time a sitting US Vice President (GOP, of course) was morally outraged at the news that a fictional sitcom character decided to go it alone as a single mother. www.cnn.com/2024/09/22/e...
Anybody else get seemingly arbitrarily suspended over on X? This got me suspended for "violent speech". I'm still trying figure out where the violence is.
Wasn't on the ABC Evening News last night, and I was more than a bit put off that 8-1/2 minutes in there was a three minute segment on Taylor Swift's engagement. IMHO, that's a very sad commentary on the current state of US media.
I must have been doing kale wrong. I tried it once. I still have nightmares.
Said it before, I'll say it again: DOGE was a smoke screen to facilitate the penetration of the citizen and consumer data firewalls in government agencies in order to correlate all of that data and export it to users like Palantir. Dictatorship depends on surveillance and suppression.
Did you ever see a more parody-impaired crowd than MAGA? Then again, their Orange Schittstain Gawd in dirty adult diapers is a walking, talking parody.
Trump's policies are going to absolutely break the FBI, ICE, CBP, HSI, NPS and other federal law enforcement agencies. Agents are being pulled from duties including counter-terrorism, fighting sex- & child-trafficking rings, US infiltration by foreign drug cartels, etc.
This country really does need to get back to basics. I get the concept of "federalism", but that concept does not overtake the original principal that, unless specifically delegated from the states to the federal government, states' rights are of primacy.
I just wonder what brand MAGA's going to go after to drag back to "the good old days" next? (Note for MAGA: Your "good old days" weren't so good for a lot of people.)
I wonder if all of those TDY (Temporary Duty) Guardsmen are collecting the DC per diem rate of $183 each and every day they're there? If so, they're some of the most expensive gardeners in the world. (PS - DC per diem goes to $275 per day this coming Monday.)
Your wallet shrinks, your 401(k) tanks, but Trump's first thought is to help Elon.
Skip them purchases on Friday, February 28. Not trying to hurt any businesses, just sending a consumer-centric message.
If your representative is dodging in-person town halls, call them out! Tag them and demand they face their constituents.
I just can't seem to crack the algorithm code on Bluesky. I follow 700 accounts, but my timeline is a relative hellscape of topics I have no interest in from accounts I don't follow. I don't get it. I'm spending more and more time back over in the bad place. 😠
Hope everyone comes back with heads attached.
Consumers don't like economic drama and uncertainty - and in an aire where people are losing their jobs...... Buckle up, y'all!
Meanwhile, Trump jets off to his 3rd consecutive Mar a Lago golf weekend, this one for 5 days, in his govt 747 with 2 C-17s of Secret Service gear in tow, while 200k+ people & families, many of them veterans, wonder how they're going to pay their bills.
It's an all-out assault on the middle class.
There is such a huge liability exposure potential, no airline would engage in a conscious pattern of hiring unqualified pilots, or persons in other positions of significant responsibility.
Resist, survive, and rebuild.
Yeah, nevermind the email server Elmo's bros took into OPM, plugged into the network after firing anyone who protested, and fired off emails to all federal employees - emails with no digital signature - and did a mass data collection with no Privacy Impact Assessment in violation of the Privacy Act.
Heard it a billion times in my adult life. "I like him/her because they say what's on their mind." Actually, through the years I learned that I liked people better when they thought about what they said before babbling it out there. You can't unring a bell. And you can't unspeak a word.
Well, my gas is up 13 cents a gallon - so far. Quite the different landscape than the load of horseschitt lies he was selling back in October, less than a month before the election. "It'll all happen very quickly" - well, at least that part wasn't a lie.
Great information! A sense of belonging and purpose are primary human needs, and are very much overlooked in a punitive based judicial system.
I am a former incarcerated firefighter. I served in a California fire camp from 2009 to 2012. Misinformation is afire on the internet, so here are facts about the prison firefighter program, all in one place. A thread.
"So much winning....." She's whuppin' that little Naranja-head's tRump.
25th Amendment
That’s what the work of an FPV operator in Ukraine looks like.
My IRA is down more than $20,000, and it isn't even noon. Sure as fuck doesn't feel like "fun" to me.
Billions of dollars lost from millions of Americans' retirement accounts - these chucklefucks call it fun.
I think of "good governance" as something that goes on in the background of my life, quiet & unnoticed. Trump is anything, but.
She tried her damndest, too. Too many orange Kool-Aid drinking simps to overcome.
Trump went from "grocery prices will come down fast and a lot" to a casual and indifferent "Yeah, there will be some pain" in the blink of an election. Trump won on lies. He duped a bunch of naive simps whom he persuaded to believe were living in a bad economy. They're fixin' to learn a bad economy.
Yup. Trump's announcement on Friday dropped the Dow 500 points. Dow futures are down another 500 points and NASDAQ futures are down 300 points this morning. Funny, that's not what happens when grocery prices come DOWN. Wha' happened, MAGA?
Here we go y'all. Trump's tariff announcements on Friday dropped the Dow 500 points within an hour, and this morning Dow futures are down another 500 points, NASDAQ futures down 300 points. That translates to billions of dollars wiped out from American retirement nesteggs.
If you want a first-person account of the assassination of the US government that's currently on-going, check out this post from Reddit from an OPM employee..... x.com/sandibachom/...
Boy, we sure went from "Prices will start coming down on Day One" to "some pain" in the blink of an election. Millions of Americans have been on the edge of "some pain" for a while. These tariffs are household budget busters. It was NEVER about the price of eggs.
Just because this guy has no hobbies or anyone who wants to spend time with him doesn't mean the rest of us have to live like him.
And when tariffs are rescinded, the price never comes back down & corporations report record profits & higher executive compensation.
The government may have been barred from observing it, but state & municipal governments, private business, and private individuals haven't.
Back on 9/11, what leapt out at me was the brutal murder of pilots of the 4 aircraft. The only reason to kill the pilots was to do something with those planes that the pilots would NEVER do under any circumstances. Trump is now doing the same thing on a government-wide scale.
Trump absolutely chucked the Army crew under the bus in that delulu press conference. And no disrespect to anyone affected by this tragedy, but even stipulating to the Army pilots making a mistake, they wouldn't deserve that.
A good friend of mine was a UH-60 crew member at Fort Lewis. When they went out on night training missions with NVGs, her girlfriend would be so high strung SHE had to take anxiety meds. Her biggest concern was power transmission lines.
For SERIOUSLY real, right? Our IT new-hire/new-arrival IT consent form had a statement that warned of *termination* for so much as inserting a non-agency thumb drive in our laptop USB port. I'm sure you saw it all. Our phishing email test pass rate was abysmal - usually in the 60% range.
Didn't you know that schitt was coming??? "No, NOOOO, Mr. ICEman! Not MY family!!! Just the BAD ones!!!!" Welcome to "Finding Out", y'all.
Yeah - When you've got a leak, getting nasty and threatening employees has never been a proven solution.
🤣🤣🤣👍 "Have a nice day!"
These were some Musk bros who brought an email server into OPM and hooked it up over the protestations of the career civil service IT folks. Apparently, there were some super-smart people who thought the emails were phishing tests due to their lack of a digital signature. Best Buy server, maybe?
Lance obviously has ZERO idea of how DCA airspace works. (It's rife with helicopters - Park Service, DC Police, Army, Coast Guard, CBP.....)
Yeah, he's planning on meeting with the families, but not the first responders. Tearful family members make better political props.
Was reading today that those emails were sent out using a non-secure email server and the tRump Administration is also in deep schitt for a mass data solicitation without a Privacy Impact Assessment (illegal), and they intended to pass the results to a non-government employee. He fugged up.
If NTSB finds the accident was caused by a white male, the finding will be "Human Error." If NTSB find the accident was caused by someone OTHER than a white male, the finding will be "Human Error", But Trump will be screaming DEI! DEI! DEI! Persons other than white males aren't allowed to be human.
Proof of the culturally entrenched racism out there I'm certain NTSB will find the most probable cause was human error, pointing to the pilots and/or ATC controllers If these individuals are white: Human Error If they are POC: DEI. That's racism. POC are always expected to perform at another level.
I'm sure we'll see you again real soon!
What a doof.
Hey - shout out to the Kansas Bluesky peeps - I know y'all lost some loved ones tonight. Very sorry for your loss. Take care of yourselves and take it a day at a time. Time really does heal all wounds.
Those are the pets who really know how lucky you are that they graciously allowed you into their lives. 🤣
Uninformed speculation. He thinks he's a pilot and knows more about air traffic control than anybody.
He's a sociopathic narcissist. He thinks he's always the smartest person in the room, and everything he babbles is an intellectual's gem.
I cannot believe Trump actually posted this concerning the DCA air disaster tonight. Totally moronic.
The NTSB will do its thing, and they're very good at it. Tower clearly told the helo Pat-25 to pass behind the AA CRJ-70, but Pat-25 never confirmed traffic in sight. RIP all 😭.
Did you see Trump's post on Truth Social? Speculative, uninformed, and idiotic. And those are my flattering adjectives.
I keep hearing “4 survivors” on BSky and X, but no MSM outlets have been given this information. I would treat this information as highly suspect.
***Barack Obama has entered the chat***
Black parents have been having "the talk" with their kids for decades ("How to survive an encounter with law enforcement"). Brown parents now have to have their own "the talk" with their kids. This ain't where I want my America to be.
Dog's got good taste.
Tweet, Heil! Tweet, Heil! Tweet, Heil!
The joke is on us.
