169 Comments
User's avatar
Deplorable Laura's avatar

WHY does the the State Dept have employees that work on climate change??

Expand full comment
nymusicdaily's avatar

here's why the State Dept has employees that work on climate change:"these incomplete models become the foundation for restructuring the entire global economy through carbon markets, ESG investing, and international governance frameworks. Models that cannot accurately predict weather two weeks out and routinely mispredict hurricanes are supposedly sufficient to justify permanent institutional transformation due to multi-decadal projections supposedly superior to two-week projections, which is clearly absurd."

https://escapekey.substack.com/p/platos-cave

Expand full comment
Victoria Chandler's avatar

Really. So they are responsible for browbeating third world countries to keep their resources 'in the ground'. (Well, except for those rare earth minerals that are so important that they turn a blind eye to the child labor that extracts them from the earth.) I have read that the continent of Africa is sitting on 800 Trillion Cubic Feet of natural gas reserves. Think how much better their lives would be if they could utilize that. Instead, they burn dung and other equally unhealthy fuels to have even a modicum of a life like we Westerners take for granted.

https://energycapitalpower.com/top-ten-african-countries-sitting-on-the-most-natural-gas/

Expand full comment
vladROBOT 🪱's avatar

Right…?

Expand full comment
PapayaSF's avatar

US-international lecturing, bribing, and bribe-taking have long been State Department functions.

Expand full comment
Eric Brown's avatar

To determine how much US taxpayers will spend on keeping Chinese and Indian coal power plants open.

Expand full comment
K2's avatar

Ummm, probably to have negiotiators ready to talk to “Gaia.”

Expand full comment
Gym+Fritz's avatar

What, exactly did they do? What was the total cost (salaries, benefits, overhead, retirement, expenses, etc.) of having them do it? How did American taxpayers benefit?

Expand full comment
Mystic William's avatar

In Canada virtually every department of every level of government has been told to modify actions and institute

Policies to mitigate climate change. Tens of thousands of rules that do nothing except increase costs have been implemented.

Expand full comment
Lisa Ricketts's avatar

Bingo! These are make work programs congered out of thin air. These programs benefit major Hedge Funds that distribute wealth to the Uber Wealthy like the Soros family. Soros has his hands in many pots, constantly stirring, bribing politicians , academia and Union leadership, etc to create chaos, false protest and industry that cost the taxpayers by laundering tax dollars into Grants, non-taxed endowments (Harvard, Stanford, etc).

The new World order is being achieved using the tax dollars of the citizens of numerous countries worldwide.

Expand full comment
Flippin’ Jersey's avatar

To quote Joe Biden: C’mon man!

Why wouldn’t they get to profit off the CG grift too? There was so much money, NPR probably had a couple of dedicated CG “journalists” on staff.

Expand full comment
suannee's avatar

Because climate change is the biggest factor in everything. Climate change is climate manipulation. Floods manufactured in drought areas. Dubai, Texas, New Mexico. No supplies in grocery stores in NM. Floods in TX is the excuse. No veggies, lack of sun affects growth of veggies. Death, doom, gloom. Unfortunately, it's all true.

Expand full comment
Mystic William's avatar

What is true? Climate change ? Or Skulduggery?

Expand full comment
Gunther Heinz's avatar

More like skull f---ery.

Expand full comment
Gary Edwards's avatar

It's the whole of government approach!

Expand full comment
Gunther Heinz's avatar

To adjust the thermostat. Duh.

Expand full comment
fiendish_librarian's avatar

I remember taking the News Hour seriously during the Lehrer-MacNeil years. Maybe it wasn't silly and worthless credential theatre like it is now? Or maybe I know better now? Also, is there a more degenerate whore than David Brooks? If there's a media version of OnlyFans, he must be at the top of the table.

Expand full comment
Chris Bray's avatar

I'm sure David French would be DEEPLY OFFENDED that you consider David Brooks a bigger whore.

Expand full comment
leah's avatar

haha! You're funny!

Expand full comment
K2's avatar

lololol

Expand full comment
Steenroid's avatar

Don’t forget Rick Wilson.

Expand full comment
The Radical Individualist's avatar

I've had the same thought about the McNeil-Lehrer news hour, for years. They used to have panels that would discuss issues, and I mean DISCUSS. No good guys, no bad guys, no name-calling. PBS unabashedly pushes an agenda now, just like all media. They are trying to live off their previous reputation.

It's scary to think that many younger people think that this tripe constitutes real journalism and that they are getting real news.

Expand full comment
Leonard's avatar

I used to watch that for a few months in the late 80’s. One side of the panel would argue for doing A, while the other side would argue for doing B. Then each side would expose the other side’s half-truths and make their final points.

Usually my conclusion would be “I know less now than when the segment started. We shouldn’t do A, nor B. Nor C, D, E etc. “

Then I realized the whole thing was just another network time waster. But at least it wasn’t the drama queen bullshit it has become.

Expand full comment
The Radical Individualist's avatar

I'll just quietly disagree with your observation. There's nothing wrong with different points of view. The word 'issue' means that there are at least two accepted points of view on something. Rational people want to hear those opposing points of view before they jump to any conclusions.

I do remember one foolish debate however. It was the classic, "Was the American civil war caused by slavery or by clashing economic systems."

The correct answer is, "Both".

Expand full comment
Gunther Heinz's avatar

I used to watch hours and hours of "Different Strokes" just to see if Dana Plato would flash her tits.

Expand full comment
Frontera Lupita's avatar

It’s not the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour…it hasn’t been called that for many years. You date yourself.😉

It’s just the ‘PBS News Hour’ and it’s total 💩. And I haven’t watched it for many many years.

Expand full comment
Richard Parker's avatar

Used to watch regularly until it drifted into leftest theater.

Expand full comment
The Radical Individualist's avatar

We were all dating ourselves. That's the point.

The good old days were never as good as we like to remember. But, indeed, the McNeil Lehrer Newshour was far superior to the PBS Newshour.

Expand full comment
Valerie's avatar

My dad listened to McNeil Lehrer when I was a young child, as far back as my memory goes. I’m 57 and he’s 93 now, so I’m talking early 1970s. I loved his ‘fighting shows’ and learned to love politics and debate over issues from watching with him. Sad to see what it’s become.

Expand full comment
Frontera Lupita's avatar

But there is never an equal airing of the other side on PBS anymore. The show that your father watched back in the day, is totally different and unrecognizable from the 💩 they have been spewing out for awhile now. For the better part of the last 25 years.

Expand full comment
Valerie's avatar

Yeah, that’s what I was saying. It’s unrecognizable now.

Expand full comment
DancingInAshes's avatar

Paul Krugman is putting on his lipstick and knee-high boots to hit the corner right now to prove he’s a bigger whore

Expand full comment
RobMc's avatar

You just insulted degenerate whores everywhere.

:-)

Expand full comment
KenO's avatar

Oh but David B is so well spoken, so ‘intellectual.’

Reminds me of the text in Proverbs, ‘the whore wipes her mouth and says, I’ve done nothing wrong.’

Expand full comment
New Considerist's avatar

Tom Friedman?

Expand full comment
fiendish_librarian's avatar

Oof, yeah. I mean if Bonnie Blue was shape-shifted into pundit form...

Expand full comment
Leslie M's avatar

Isn’t he the one who gushed over the sharp crease in Obama’s trousers? Eww

Expand full comment
CB's avatar

Hard to top Chris Matthews, though, who said of an Obummer soundbite, "I felt this thrill going up my leg." I suspect the State Department will feel the loss of 3,000 employees about as keenly as sensible people feel the loss of Matthews' lowball TV show "Hardball."

Expand full comment
K2's avatar

Ugh, I tried to forget that…

Expand full comment
Doctor Hammer's avatar

Firing Line was a great example of worthwhile tv. Not exactly news per se, but the interviews and dialogues were awesome.

Hoover Institute has all of them up on YouTube as well, which is wonderful. It is amazing how much the topics debated are still relevant today.

Expand full comment
Mitch's avatar

you insult whores in the comparison

Expand full comment
Robert C Culwell's avatar

Absolutely!

Expand full comment
Isaiah Antares's avatar

I remember when MacNeil announced his retirement. I once liked that show too. Then, later, it became painfully, obviously scripted.

Expand full comment
Alan Devincentis's avatar

I’ve been following the “news” for 52 years. In that time they’ve lied their faces off since then,so…

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
3d
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Brigitte's avatar

Read about Wall Street Week. Rukeyser’s show was STOLEN from him.

Expand full comment
Nick's avatar

My company just let 5% go and many years of experience gone of specialized electronics knowledge and know how. No biggie, barely any one in the media covered it. Maybe a few articles at best. Happens every day.

Expand full comment
Cathleen Manny's avatar

Nick - yes! Companies have been doing this for decades now…letting the valuable, experienced staff members go, because they can get cheaper labor by hiring inexperienced, less valuable people. Short-term thinking. It’s all about the bottom line, each fiscal quarter.

Expand full comment
Richard Parker's avatar

Happened to me; it was a liberation of sorts.

Expand full comment
Just An American's avatar

I watched that clip (at the end of the post: Everybody go watch it, make sure you have something in your hands that you can afford to break) this morning during breakfast. I was equal parts laughing at the top of my lungs and also trying my hardest to not throw up my eggs. It was the most absurd display. Not only are these the *least attractive* people I have ever seen, but they are holding frigging headstones that say "DEMOCRACY" on them while wearing funeral veils, all finished off with some fake sobbing. Then Maryland Man's Senator shows up to tell them that they will beat this in court...even though the Supreme Court green lit the firings. I can't even. At this point, fire half the State Department and the US Government, because if that was a great example of who these people are: THEY ALL HAVE TO GO!

Expand full comment
Susan's avatar

It's always the same fake theatrical presentation; it's so obviously prepared in advance and staged. On the bright side, the fired employees with their crocodile tears and over-the-top phony outrage can add "scenery-chewing drama queen" to their resumes for the job search to come.

Expand full comment
Janine's avatar

I'm so sorry for people like John Brennan who spent $1 billion arming jihadists from AQ & IS to be the "Free Syrian Army." So sorry for Blinken & Sullivan et al who got us into endless useless war on behalf of a corrupt "ally" and actually installed an IS & AQ jihadist as President of Syria. I hope all these great workers for democracy and American values get the full brunt of FBI investigations for doing their best to subvert our own democracy as well.

Expand full comment
Chris Bray's avatar

Yes, that's the next thing to get into: the premise that the layoffs compromise America's foreign policy successes. Syria, Libya, Afghanistan....

Expand full comment
Occam's avatar

Scorching point, Chris. With the state department’s list of abject failures spanning over 50 years now, firing is probably too soft. Public executions might be more appropriate.

Expand full comment
Sue Kelley's avatar

Can you imagine people so fragile that losing a job is Armageddon? And these are the people that lecture us about fragility and privilege

Expand full comment
CecilRhodes's avatar

Rush use to talk about the permanent job security for friends and family of the "elites". This is it. This is what "took generations to build". They can't weep for the loss of the grift, they have to wrap their grief in something that sounds noble, even if it fails the red faced test.

Expand full comment
Susan's avatar

Seems as though the State Dept layoffs (and similar) are a red-ribboned gift to the Usual Suspects and members of the professional self-righteous go-go government "liberal-lefty" class like Brooks and Capehart. They love having an agenda of items that they can publicly weep and get indignant about. What else would they do, dig ditches?

Expand full comment
Richard Parker's avatar

These ate high pay, high status, low accountability jobs with 'Iron Rice Bowls'.

Expand full comment
Richard Parker's avatar

They will be hard to replace.

Expand full comment
Gunther Heinz's avatar

He who eat from iron lice bowl get frozen grape nuts!

Expand full comment
PapayaSF's avatar

I’ll bet that the next armed conflict will be blamed on these layoffs.

Expand full comment
Alan Devincentis's avatar

Bingo!

Expand full comment
GadflyBytes's avatar

It’s beyond tedious. There are multinational companies that max out at 40,000 employees.

Some people might counter that the State Department is more important blah blah blah than a corporation and I might agree, if it worked as intended, ie Constitutionally, and not as a slush fund for the most incompetent, corrupt people in the world, next to any royal family, and also likely including them.

Besides, many multinational companies make things we actually need and turn a profit, while employing vast swathes of people.

The US government doesn’t make money; it prints it.

And then, it siphons the money we all make and distributes it amongst, as far as I can tell, the most craven, dishonest and often bizarre NGOs, as well as many corporations, who have become bloated and useless, because of the firehose of government money flowing unheeded into their coffers, ahem, Boeing?

If they haven’t become bloated and useless, they started out that way, like the empty shell Stacey Abrams set up as a literal slush fund?

How can anyone paying attention be expected to care?

If anything, I wish they would cut more foreign policy dinosaurs out of the fossilized shale deposit that the state department has become.

Expand full comment
DD's avatar

PBS News Hour, hahahahahahaha! Please stop...........

Expand full comment
Margaret's avatar

😂

Expand full comment
SuszaQ's avatar

The more people employed by the government, the more socialist we become.

Expand full comment
Maenad's avatar

SuszaQ> That has nothing to do with socialism.

Expand full comment
SuszaQ's avatar

Abs does.

Expand full comment
Alan Devincentis's avatar

Wanna bet.

Expand full comment
Maenad's avatar

Underground unaudited operatives breaking the law on a global scale to prop up a vengeful failing empire are not socialists. Socialism is a working class movement against war and authoritarianism.

Expand full comment
JasonT's avatar

You bought the malarkey! 😂

Expand full comment
Maenad's avatar

Defining an ideology is not "buying malarkey." It means one can read.

Not having a clue what ideologies are leaves one vulnerable to fear-mongering and manipulation.

Expand full comment
JasonT's avatar

Except that definition has never reflected any reality at any time or place. It's merely marketing malarkey.

Expand full comment
Dan Jones's avatar

I would weep for the people so despondent over this that they are weeping, but somehow can't bring myself to do so, lest I cause a flash flood which would be blamed on You Know Who.

Expand full comment
MoodyP's avatar

As @datarepublican penned, at most large companies that’s a force reduction from a mid year performance review.

Anyone with a marginally functioning brain knows that whatever these 80k do, it could be done just as efficiently and with less drama with 8,000 people. Maybe 800.

And that assumes it needs to be done at all.

You cannot hate these people enough. You just can’t.

I appreciate your efforts to be diplomatic. But calling it tedious is far to kind.

Expand full comment
Yuma's Freezing's avatar

More than half of gov't employees do nothing. I've seen it in (in)action! They sit on their a$$es and let the contractors do the bulk of their work. They do keep the gossip-mill running though. But getting rid of them? What a concept! Yippee! I am enjoying the h3ll out this!!!

Expand full comment
Wayne Johnson's avatar

I was thinking the same thing. What we have been building over the decades is a bloated bureaucracy and a government-run daycare for leftists who can't find a real job in the private sector.

Expand full comment
Debbie Wagner's avatar

Nailed it.

Expand full comment
John Henry Holliday, DDS's avatar

Tom Homan needs to start deporting journalists.

Expand full comment
RobMc's avatar

He could label them Illegal Journalists.

Expand full comment
Captain Pompano's avatar

Climate negotiator must be quite the gig. Is that who convinced a Ireland to cull their cattle herd to save us all from Irish cow farts? Given that China burned more coal in 2024 than the rest of the world burned in 1995 (the first year of the COP global climate change conference), I'm gonna take a chance and say we might be OK without these folks. 🤨

Expand full comment