Last month, Senator John Kennedy stumped a Biden administration appointee to the federal district court in Eastern Washington with an astonishing series of trick questions like this: “Tell me what Article 5 of the Constitution does.” The follow-up: “How about Article 2?” The nominee couldn’t answer — in fact, couldn’t begin to hint at an answer.
Is 'the stare', perhaps, simply an expression of awed disbelief that anyone could be so discourteous as to ask such an impossible question? (edited for typo)
I confess to worrying a little about when the stare goes away, because I feel I know what his answer is going to be then. When they start admitting what they really mean to do, things start getting dicey. For now, Garland and Co. essentially are pleading the Fifth.
If I become dictator we're switching to defined-contribution retirement plans like almost all of the private sector. Defined-benefit plans are more borrowing from future generations.
I think they regard these government jobs as a way to hand out goodies to their supporters. Doing whatever the actual job is supposed to be doesn't count. For an example, see Pete Buttigieg going on about how we have too many white construction workers when the trail derailed in East Palestine. Promoting equity is his real job. He knows nothing about transportation and doesn't care, either - that doesn't promote equity.
Do you think Mayor Pete is going to be head of the DoT forever? Or do you think it's a stepping stone for a larger appointment in the next administration?
This is simply political patronage at work. It’s easier to hide the incompetent political appointees lower on the food chain, because they don’t have to walk and chew gum in Senate hearings. It reminds me of Venezuela when I was there in 2010. The country had continual rolling blackouts because the Chavistas couldn’t build and maintain their power plants. So they had American companies coming in to keep the power on, but didn’t want the masses to know they were relying on the gringos. So when they inaugurated a new plant, they would kick the Americans out of the control room for the TV cameras and install some Venezuelans for an hour. Then the Americans would come back and run the plant. The Biden Simulacrum is no different. The facade is everything. Think how cynical you have to be to appoint people with no knowledge or experience to highly technical leadership positions at agencies tasked with public safety. They love trashing the country, making a mockery of every Federal bureaucracy while they rip off the taxpayers. What else can you say?
I still want to know who is ACTUALLY running the clown show known as the Biden Administration. It ain’t Joe Biden. Why humiliate this man, who might be really competent in another job, and put so many at risk by insisting that he lead an agency that he knows nothing about. It IS indeed the Cultural Revolution mentality, and who cares if a “few” people are sacrificed for the greater good
We're already in living in a post Lysenko world! Governments all over the world are in the process of, or already have, legalized child mutilation. Men can become pregnant. We can grow sufficient food without fertilizer, OR we can all eat bugs.
Our 'leaders' have thrown out, or chosen to ignore natural laws of biology and physics. Lysenko would have been proud.
I just recently learned what lysenkoism was. How come we weren’t taught about that in our history books, hmmm?
Without a doubt this is a key feature in how they are deliberately destroying everything for the plebes. And all the diversity nonsense feeds that beast.
Lysenkoism is NOT the ONLY thing "we weren’t taught about in our history books". Our so-called "education" system has dropped, not only the programs, but the entire concepts of history, civics, and economics. Basic literacy and numeracy are no longer required to *graduate* from many high schools. Of course, useful programs like home economics, and various hands-on shop courses are long gone.
The last few decades have seen "education" transition from the traditional role - preparing young people to become productive citizens, to indoctrination centres, ensuring social conformity, in the holy name of "equity".
Are you suggesting that standards are being lowered because diversity hires are less competent? That's racist! And it's totally false, per the very diverse fact-checkers at Politifact (this claim was handled by a black neurodivergent transspecies platypus female metrosexual onanist, who is such a talented debunker that she didn't even need to do any research before debunking it as totally false). Moreover, we are making progress by lowering standards, because all standards are racist (except the standard of having 100% of your new hires be diverse, i.e., no white cis-males who don't have anal sex with other men), so the fewer standards we have, the better.
Do you like indoor plumbing? Or electricity? Too bad. We've got equity in the engineering departments now.
South Africa has been running this experiment for years. The results are exactly what one would expect, but no one wants to acknowledge that a country with nuclear power plants and a space program developing an incipient launch capability degenerated into a failed state with rolling blackouts and roads made of potholes in the span of a single generation. But hey Black Economic Empowerment, gotta make sure the right faces are occupying those prestigious jobs amirite? Nelson Mandela, yay, he was a hero, now stop asking questions, bigot.
The paradox is the explosion of credentialism -- how do you question the Holy Vaccines if you didn't go to medical school! -- right alongside the collapse in the meaning of actual qualifications.
Here, you require a special "driver's license" for chainsaws (with 8 different sub-licenses), just as one example. To use a floor-cleaning machine (the ones that look like mini-zambonis) requires a certificate. Driving a manual car requires a separate license from an automatic.
And our old now sadly departed Ford Windstar who held 7 passengers would have reqired a busdriver's license if we had added an eigth seat - because that's when a vehicle becomes a bus, and you are suddenly unable to drive it.
I could list stuff like this all day, every day, without ever even approaching what it's like in academia, even in the natural sciences (which I'm thankfully well out of nowadays).
Excellent point. Still more evidence that we live in a bifurcated Wachowski world where a red-pilled's paradox is a blue-pilled's brilliant manipulation of the Matrix.
To borrow your hilarious metaphor, we are living in a reality adjacent magical era, where only true believers accredit facts, sanctify science, and ordain experience adjacent 'professionals' and poof, all the bad dissappears. Until the train derails. And the plane crashes. And the well is poisoned. But no worries there's a pin cushion orange man around here somewhere to get even for those distasters.
Ask that little creep Garland about the Constitution and you’d get the same blank stare.
Stammering. Always. Uh uh uh uh uh senator, uh.....
"Circle Back" Circle Jerk. The uroboros of shitfuckery.
One of the few things Cocaine Mitch has got right.
I feel like that stare is hostility more than simple ignorance.
Is 'the stare', perhaps, simply an expression of awed disbelief that anyone could be so discourteous as to ask such an impossible question? (edited for typo)
I confess to worrying a little about when the stare goes away, because I feel I know what his answer is going to be then. When they start admitting what they really mean to do, things start getting dicey. For now, Garland and Co. essentially are pleading the Fifth.
At some point these people started to look at government jobs as resume-builders and simply ignored the actual job to be done.
Isn't that sad? These people are so self-entitled that the highest jobs in the land are mere stepping stones to better opportunities.
Yeah, and gold plated, fully indexed pensions.
If I become dictator we're switching to defined-contribution retirement plans like almost all of the private sector. Defined-benefit plans are more borrowing from future generations.
But I feel like Major-General Stanley in act II of "Pirates of Penzance" saying to the policemen, "but, dammit, you DON'T go..."
I think they regard these government jobs as a way to hand out goodies to their supporters. Doing whatever the actual job is supposed to be doesn't count. For an example, see Pete Buttigieg going on about how we have too many white construction workers when the trail derailed in East Palestine. Promoting equity is his real job. He knows nothing about transportation and doesn't care, either - that doesn't promote equity.
Well, "resume-building" implies that there is an intent to move on to an ostensibly bigger, better job.... then they simply ignore the moving on.
Do you think Mayor Pete is going to be head of the DoT forever? Or do you think it's a stepping stone for a larger appointment in the next administration?
Oh, yeah, the figureheads come and go, but the employees stay forever. Most gov't jobs should, along with congress, have term limits.
This is simply political patronage at work. It’s easier to hide the incompetent political appointees lower on the food chain, because they don’t have to walk and chew gum in Senate hearings. It reminds me of Venezuela when I was there in 2010. The country had continual rolling blackouts because the Chavistas couldn’t build and maintain their power plants. So they had American companies coming in to keep the power on, but didn’t want the masses to know they were relying on the gringos. So when they inaugurated a new plant, they would kick the Americans out of the control room for the TV cameras and install some Venezuelans for an hour. Then the Americans would come back and run the plant. The Biden Simulacrum is no different. The facade is everything. Think how cynical you have to be to appoint people with no knowledge or experience to highly technical leadership positions at agencies tasked with public safety. They love trashing the country, making a mockery of every Federal bureaucracy while they rip off the taxpayers. What else can you say?
They're using "Idiocracy" the movie as a video manual. Way ahead of the timeline.
Trump and I are the same age. We want to see the America we love great again.
OMG:
The nominee had, again, absolutely no clue at all, suggesting a cluelessness so complete it rises nearly to the level of the Buttigiegian.
Buttigiegian!
I can’t stop laughing. I thank God for Chris Bray, a key player in my stay sane plan. 😂
I still want to know who is ACTUALLY running the clown show known as the Biden Administration. It ain’t Joe Biden. Why humiliate this man, who might be really competent in another job, and put so many at risk by insisting that he lead an agency that he knows nothing about. It IS indeed the Cultural Revolution mentality, and who cares if a “few” people are sacrificed for the greater good
ShortWended - Are you saying that you feel sorry for the appointee for the FAA who couldn’t answer any of the questions? If so, why would you?
https://youtu.be/S4lvLBe6fsE
i fear we're headed for a lysenkoism
No later than March, 2020.
We're already in living in a post Lysenko world! Governments all over the world are in the process of, or already have, legalized child mutilation. Men can become pregnant. We can grow sufficient food without fertilizer, OR we can all eat bugs.
Our 'leaders' have thrown out, or chosen to ignore natural laws of biology and physics. Lysenko would have been proud.
I just recently learned what lysenkoism was. How come we weren’t taught about that in our history books, hmmm?
Without a doubt this is a key feature in how they are deliberately destroying everything for the plebes. And all the diversity nonsense feeds that beast.
Lysenkoism is NOT the ONLY thing "we weren’t taught about in our history books". Our so-called "education" system has dropped, not only the programs, but the entire concepts of history, civics, and economics. Basic literacy and numeracy are no longer required to *graduate* from many high schools. Of course, useful programs like home economics, and various hands-on shop courses are long gone.
The last few decades have seen "education" transition from the traditional role - preparing young people to become productive citizens, to indoctrination centres, ensuring social conformity, in the holy name of "equity".
Are you suggesting that standards are being lowered because diversity hires are less competent? That's racist! And it's totally false, per the very diverse fact-checkers at Politifact (this claim was handled by a black neurodivergent transspecies platypus female metrosexual onanist, who is such a talented debunker that she didn't even need to do any research before debunking it as totally false). Moreover, we are making progress by lowering standards, because all standards are racist (except the standard of having 100% of your new hires be diverse, i.e., no white cis-males who don't have anal sex with other men), so the fewer standards we have, the better.
Chris, thank you for "Buttigiegian". An admirable addition to the lexicon.
Unreal. He had no idea what a stall or spin are, or what causes them. This cannot continue. He should have been tossed out of the building.
Do you like indoor plumbing? Or electricity? Too bad. We've got equity in the engineering departments now.
South Africa has been running this experiment for years. The results are exactly what one would expect, but no one wants to acknowledge that a country with nuclear power plants and a space program developing an incipient launch capability degenerated into a failed state with rolling blackouts and roads made of potholes in the span of a single generation. But hey Black Economic Empowerment, gotta make sure the right faces are occupying those prestigious jobs amirite? Nelson Mandela, yay, he was a hero, now stop asking questions, bigot.
Buttigiegian. Brilliant. I’m diving into that phrase-
“Son, the way you cut the grass this week is Buttigiegian”. Of course then he wouldn’t do anything about it for two weeks.
As soon as he returns from paternity leave.
LOL
"Get your Buttigiegian ass out of my lazy-boy and go re-mow the lawn!"
So many ways to go with that one
Reported for thought-crime.
Credentials, facts and knowledge are social constructs. To be able to think otherwise is wrongthink. Report for renewed Kallocain-injection.
The paradox is the explosion of credentialism -- how do you question the Holy Vaccines if you didn't go to medical school! -- right alongside the collapse in the meaning of actual qualifications.
Don't I know it, me being swedish.
Here, you require a special "driver's license" for chainsaws (with 8 different sub-licenses), just as one example. To use a floor-cleaning machine (the ones that look like mini-zambonis) requires a certificate. Driving a manual car requires a separate license from an automatic.
And our old now sadly departed Ford Windstar who held 7 passengers would have reqired a busdriver's license if we had added an eigth seat - because that's when a vehicle becomes a bus, and you are suddenly unable to drive it.
I could list stuff like this all day, every day, without ever even approaching what it's like in academia, even in the natural sciences (which I'm thankfully well out of nowadays).
Excellent point. Still more evidence that we live in a bifurcated Wachowski world where a red-pilled's paradox is a blue-pilled's brilliant manipulation of the Matrix.
She expressed a WILLINGNESS to google the Constitution (probably written by a man!), didn't she? What more can we ask?
I’m sure he has flown in an airplane at least once so that certainly makes him highly qualified to run the FAA.
Meanwhile, I will keep running my fossil fuel guzzling automobile wherever I want to go until they pry it out of my cold, dead hands.
Forget it, Chris, it's Equity!
To borrow your hilarious metaphor, we are living in a reality adjacent magical era, where only true believers accredit facts, sanctify science, and ordain experience adjacent 'professionals' and poof, all the bad dissappears. Until the train derails. And the plane crashes. And the well is poisoned. But no worries there's a pin cushion orange man around here somewhere to get even for those distasters.