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clean on opsec @maybeitsonlyus.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

Par for the course for Matty. Why anyone pays him for his thoughts is a mystery

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clean on opsec @maybeitsonlyus.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

“This has nothing to do with Epstein”

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clean on opsec @maybeitsonlyus.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

Here’s MTG’s amendment. Perfectly consistent with the justification she provided.

Ine Chair recognizes the gentlewoman Trom
Georgia.
Ms. GREENE of Georgia. Mr. Chair, as the House considers the Defense
appropriations bill today that costs the American people $831 billion,
it is important to talk about the fact that this is the funding for our
great men and women serving in our military and our Nation's defense.
The Department of Defense's mission
statement is to deter war and ensure our Nation's security.
That is
worthy of the American people's hard-earned tax dollars. However, the American people are $37 trillion in debt, so this is money that is being spent that they already don't have.
My amendment would strike $500 million in funding for nuclear-armed
Israel's missile defense system, and it is important to phrase it that way
Israel is a nuclear-armed nation, which is very capable of defending themselves,
and they have been proving that
so as we have watched on the world stage.
The U.S. already provides Israel with
$3.8 billion annually in
foreign aid. That is $3.8 billion. That is a lot of money.
Additionally, the April 2024 security supplemental included $8.7
billion for Israel. That is nuclear-armed Israel. During the recent 12-
day war, the U.S. used 15 to 20 percent of our Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile stockpiles defending nuclear-armed Israel, which cost us over $800 million.
{time} 1350
The $500 million provided in this bill
will fund Israel's--that is,
nuclear-armed Israel's--missile defense system--the Iron Dome, David's Sling, Arrow system--yet Israel is a nuclear-armed nation. That is a pretty big deterrent for any of their enemies. Any nation that has a nuclear bomb has the greatest threat against their enemies.
U.S. aid typically accounts for 15 to 20 percent of Israel's defense budget, even though Israel--nuclear-armed Israel--has universal
healthcare for their citizens and subsidized college for their
citizens. They are able to provide that.
However, here in America, we are $37 trillion in debt.
My amendment to str…

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clean on opsec @maybeitsonlyus.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

This just came out! They marinate in this garbage - www.politico.com/newsletters/...

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clean on opsec @maybeitsonlyus.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

From Politico - someone get Greg Grandin to let him know it might be time for a 2nd edition of The End of the Myth

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clean on opsec @maybeitsonlyus.bsky.social · 05/01/2025

I come back to this, from @davidjroth.bsky.social, pretty frequently. (From this piece after Jan 6: defector.com/after-the-sa...)

But, in the absence and abandonment of this long low moment, every idle sadism and dishonesty flourished like a particularly insistent invasive plant.
Here is the fact of it: the country's leaders cannot quite bring themselves to say that the lives of people living in this country matter at all, let alone act as if they do. The state fails daily; it has somehow forgotten how to do anything but hurt and cannot even agree that it would be good to try to help. It does not tell the truth as a matter of course, which gives license to everyone adrift in this to believe whatever story they find most compelling. In the ways that matter most, in the places where it is needed most, the state barely exists.
Where there is supposed to be strength is only power and brute force; what is supposed to be held in common has been openly looted; the triumphal national image is gnawed to bits by a frantically denied shame and raw fear.
The distance and defeat in this is awful to behold, and has created a nation that is both desperately strident and shockingly servile. In the absence of any capacity or will to demand more from it, politics just becomes what people argue about instead of what's actually happening to them. It's just a TV show, and people watch it as such.

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clean on opsec @maybeitsonlyus.bsky.social · 28/12/2024

In light of the infighting over on The Bad Place, I’m reminded of this passage by in Rites of Spring - “Contrary to surface impressions of monolithic unity centered on the Führer and of administrative efficiency, if not wizardry, the party and the Reich represented an "authoritarian anarchy."

Ct in that
아
S.
perience, ok a back seat to the noty, the specifics of the "program" always took a back seat to the notion of the movement as energy, of conflict as liberation. What was important was constant confronta-tion, an unflinching adversarial posture, not the details of that pos-ture. Thus the party before 1933 and then the administration of the Third Reich could sustain a remarkable divergence, characterized by hundreds of petty jealousies, rivalries, disagreements, and a chaotic jostling for power and influence. Goebbels despised Goering; Goering hated Hess; they all loathed Rosenberg; and on it went, endless whirlpools of internecine spite and animus. Contrary to surface impressions of monolithic unity centered on the Führer and of administrative efficiency, if not wizardry, the party and the Reich represented an "authoritarian anarchy." s
The movement displayed striking contradictions between programmatic statements and actual policy. The peasantry was heralded as the "lifeblood of the nation," but depopulation of rural areas continued and Germany actually became more urbanized during the Third Reich. Promises to provide every German with "a little house in the country" to the contrary, Nazi building plans were focused almost exclusively on monumental urban architecture. Women were to remain in the home and devote themselves to their role as mothers, but even before the outbreak of the war in 1939 there were more women in the work force than ever. The small businessman was supposed to prosper in the Third Reich, but in reality business and industry became more concentrated. The contradictions, like the animosities, were countless.
To outsiders, perhaps the most ironic of Nazi asseverations was the race thesis. That the supremacy of the Aryan race should be propounded by the likes of Hitler, Goebbels, Goering, and the rest was simply ludicrous. Take Hitler, wich his dark hair, small eyes, low brow,

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clean on opsec @maybeitsonlyus.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

Proposing to cut 60% of mandatory spending is absolutely insane.

THE FEDERAL BUDGET IN FISCAL YEAR
2023
A Closer Look at
Mandatory Spending
Primarily payments for benefit programs whose eligibility rules and benefit formulas are set by law
At a Glance
$3.8
Trillion
$2.2
Trillion
13.9% of GDP
13.1% of GDP
Mandatory outlays
Government in
2023
Outlays for Social
Mandatory outlays in 2023
Average annual
in 2023
Mandatory
Outlays
$3.81
Trillion
183) Medicare
147 Meas
COP ROES
$197
Other Program
- tos sappeareron
- 10) Tenty Sapport and
- 130 apee
- $551 Vesorens Acomo Securty
-$167
Mandatory
Outlays in 2003 and 2023
Percentage of GDP
Man Heath Care Fronteres
Medicam
2.2
• 22.
• • 04.
eeeurt agrer
Certain Veterans' Progrems
o• oos
010007
07801
ده ه •
-0.1
|。
-02 |
-0.1|
0.4
0.8
1.0
요음

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clean on opsec @maybeitsonlyus.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

Big “we’re all trying to find the guy who did this” throughout the article

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clean on opsec @maybeitsonlyus.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

Such a great book. The lack of an “intelligent and consistent whole” is the fundamental issue, imo

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clean on opsec @maybeitsonlyus.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

Nailed it. Nice essay…liked the connection to Taleb, as well.

The Democrats, hall monitors of our collapsing political system, have waved the rulebook furiously in the face of voters and Republican officials alike over this past hideous decade, reminding anyone and everyone who will listen that dogs aren't allowed the play basketball while fascist AirBud dunks on the left again and again. And the crowd goes wild.

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clean on opsec @maybeitsonlyus.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Yeeesh…all those words to say nothing at all. The authors know who won the election, right?

Building international cooperation around such a transformation of the global economy would reestablish U.S.–Chinese relations on a new foundation, begin to relegitimize international norms by applying them to people of all countries, and address the truly existential threats humanity faces today.
Finally, it will be impossible to repair U.S. foreign policy without repairing U.S. politics. No foreign policy agenda, however well defined, can long endure amid the country’s current polarization, in which every issue becomes yet another weapon in the culture wars between left and right. Overcoming this challenge means confronting the fact that American democracy is constrained, if not torpedoed, by a campaign finance system that is tantamount to legalized bribery.

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clean on opsec @maybeitsonlyus.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

“400k may have been discouraged from work.” They’re about the scapegoat disabled veterans the same way they do every other recipient of government aid.

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clean on opsec @maybeitsonlyus.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

From Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death - we sound like goons because we collectively lack context. The speed and availability of hollow information creates a discontinuity - we’re all just howling into the wind

“For if remembering is to be something more than nostalgia, it requires a contextual basis—a theory, a vision, a metaphor—something within which facts can be organized and patterns discerned. The politics of image and instantaneous news provides no such context, is, in fact, hampered by attempts to provide any. ”

Excerpt From
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Postman, Neil
This material may be protected by copyright.

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clean on opsec @maybeitsonlyus.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

We’re entering a new inequality regime, to reference Picketty. Certainly, many paths are possible, but the one we’re on now leads to widespread destitution and the erosion of the promise of America.

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clean on opsec @maybeitsonlyus.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Step by step they’re going to dismantle whatever social safety programs exist in this country, all under the guise of collective sacrifice for the future good. Rest assured, the rich will sacrifice nothing, while the rest of us will experience increased precarity, fear, and isolation.

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clean on opsec @maybeitsonlyus.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

This graph is shameful. First, the offhanded header, as if the rise in disability benefits can be attributed to sleep apnea. Next, starting the x-axis in 1999. I wonder what happened in 2001. Why the rise after 2010…perhaps post-9/11 veterans begin experiencing the symptoms of their service?

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clean on opsec @maybeitsonlyus.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

“Our” definition of manhood - who is our? Will someone please do DEI for these disaffected white men? I understand the political consequences, but it really is annoying how we’re being asked to coddle the biggest fucking losers in existence.

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