During one video meeting with a representative of Mr. Musk’s team, civil servants at the technology arm of the General Services Administration even bombarded an online chat with spoon emojis to express their displeasure at the deferred resignation offer known as the “fork in the road.” (Their bosses responded by removing spoons from the list of searchable emojis permitted in their videoconferencing platform.)

I heard about that, it was a Teams meeting so the emoji’s pop up on the video conference screen, and it was just an avalanche of spoons.

They’re going to try and make it sound like lots of people are taking the fork, and it’s saving money

But they’re letting people who took it in February extend to 12/31/25 and then retire…

Getting paid and benefits the entire time.

The vast majority taking it are people who were retiring before that, and probies who likely would have been let go anyways.

It’s going to cost agencies a shit ton of money, which is the point. Republicans don’t care about the actual funding, it’s just the excuse that’s easiest to defend. They’re fine spending the money if the work isn’t done anyways

In a rare turn of events, Gerry Connelly is actually making some noise over that.

Absolutely nowhere near what AOC would be in his position, but I was surprised to see Connelly even released a letter about it.

But the reason they want this is to claim an AI going over the responses counts as an “appropriate review” necessary before DoD RIF of probies.

But there’s already multiple lawsuits over how DOGE/OPM have zero authority to be acting like every agency’s HR and sending out this shit

Man…

Crazy how much power a president has.

A shame we wasted the last four years on someone unwilling to use any of that power because he thought a president couldn’t…

Unfortunately for everyone, Biden also believes a president didn’t have the power to limit future president’s power either.

Like, there’s a lot of shit we should be paying attention to, but it’s important to remember that solidifying behind a moderate fixing absolutely nothing, and that voters won’t turn out to keep someone like that in offense.

We’re taking the hardest path to victory that has no rewards at the end.

Why not take the easy path where we run a candidate dem voters agree with, who will at least put a good faith effort into fixing stuff.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_O’Donnell

That’s the acting commissioner of the IRS.

He fired the probationary employees at the IRS because he was afraid to stand up to Musk and trump.

Fascists use Tinkerbell logic, they have as much power as people think they do. If we start saying Musk has the power to fire federal employees, Musk will start acting like he has the power to fire federal employees.

Details are more important than ever right now. And if the agency heads that resigned out of cowardice had stayed at their post, they could be up there right now saying they refuse to fire anyone and making a giant media spectacle out of all of this. Which would pressure the ones willing to go along to also stand by their employees.

You can’t beat fascism by going home and taking a fucking nap.

He says he still was kicked “to the curb” by Trump and Musk.

He was kicked to the curb by his agency leadership bowing to pressure from trump and Elmo.

We just went from “the president has zero control over any agency” to “the president has ultimate control over every agency”.

Neither are true, and we desperately need people to actually understand what is happening, and why nothing could happen in the four years between trump terms.

Republicans pressure agencies to do what they want, and fire agency heads who dont.

Neoliberals say they can’t do anything. And nothing gets done.

The result is sometimes we move really far right in very short amounts of time, then neoliberals normalize it.

In 2012 people would have said you were insane if you claimed the 2024 Dem candidate would want a border wall, be against healthcare reform, profracking, and actively supporting genocide.

But due to the ratchet effect of neoliberalism that’s exactly where we ended up.

Trumpism has an unlimited amount of money to throw into its efforts. Elon Musk, the wealthiest man on earth, put more than $270m into Trump’s campaign, a tiny portion of his fortune. Other multibillionaires will join Musk in spending whatever it takes.

This is why neoliberals working with Republicans for 30 years to completely dismantle campaign finance regulations never was rationale.

The wealthiest will always side with the furtherest right party, doesn’t matter if they give to both, the check to the right will always be larger.

We spent 30 years digging our own grave till that was possible.

With the Republican party in the House having only a three-vote majority we can defeat draconian, anti-working-class legislation if just two Republican members of Congress vote no.

I’d also like to point out that the “victory fund” shenanigans is defunding state dem parties (literally by design) and costing us a shit ton more than two House seats.

We’re throwing everything at a presidential race instead of down allot races, and then when we did win the presidency, immediately said it didn’t fucking matter.

If that’s the case why didn’t we spend that $1,500,000,000 on down ballot races?

That shit couldn’t win 3 house races since Biden spent four years telling us presidents were powerless?

I know they’ve changed a lot in their almost 30 years of existence…

But there’s a certain irony to the head of an organization literally named “Move on” and created for the explicit purpose of convincing people a president lying under oath was a “nothingburger” and we should all just let it go and move on, now complaining that that same president is not openly criticizing the current president is wild.

Like, it’s definitely morbidly funny, but how the fuck can people not realize that ever since Dems pivoted to neoliberalism it’s been a race to the bottom?

A small lie used to be enough that a president would be impeached, we all excused it, and 30 years later anything is excusable.

This shit ain’t working, we desperately need to try something else.

Lowering our standards just results in the other side throwing theirs out the window. We can’t beat conservatives in a race to the bottom, they don’t even need to hold their nose, they enjoy the smell.

Obama broke GW fossil fuel production records…

Trump broke Obama’s…

Biden broke trump’s…

It doesn’t matter which party wins on the topic of fossil fuels, they own both parties, which is why both presidential candidates were profracking.

Even if Kamala won, we’d be breaking the records set under Biden

Biden was bye bye 9 months ago, my dude. I’m sorry he hurt you in the feefees.

Factually untrue, and I don’t have much time for people who talk like trump supporters

Why are we still talking about Biden?

Because we can’t afford to make the same mistake we made in the last three presidential elections…

People said “why are we still talking about Hillary” after 2016, so we didn’t learn the lesson and repeated it in 2020.

Then Biden barely won and we couldn’t say anything because he was president, so we didn’t learn the lesson.

And ran another uncharismatic candidate who was further right than Dem voters, for a 3rd election in a row and lost.

Id ask why moderate politicianss never want voters to discuss their failings, but that’s obvious.

What I want to know is why voters do what you’re doing right now.

How is understanding past mistakes to prevent repeating them not important to you?

I had a guy accuse me of racism at work, even tho we’re both white, because I wasn’t “anglo Saxon enough” to be the same kind of white as him…

Like, I’m English/German ancestry, literally what the term Anglo-Saxon describes…

He was French ancestry which would make him Norman, the ones fighting Anglo Saxons…

There’s no logic to what they say or do, they hear a label is “us” and another label is “them” and they just go with it, never actually asking themselves what the terms mean and who actually fits under each label.

Shit broke my brain when he said it

That’s a list of random things that happened during his presidency…

I have no idea how that’s relevant.

This would be tho:

In the 100 years since Calvin Coolidge took office, only Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan held as few news conferences each year as the current occupant of the Oval Office.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/21/us/politics/biden-public-appearances-media.html

He wasn’t fucking capable of being president. Even Chris Clizza admits it now, why can’t you?

Those four years was not the time to let Grandpa go in a Sunday cruise, we needed an actual fighter and moderates aren’t fighters.

Good thing we spent the 4 years between trump terms with a young, motivated go-getter who checks notes his in a closet for four years and was less seen/heard than any other president.

Moderates are not equipped to fight fascism, we can’t keep rotating between the two because the fascists will break more than a Neoliberal would ever want to fix.

Neither actually wants to fix shit, just keep their wealthy donors happy

He’d have to pass a background check for that.

So they give him a bullshit title and say that means he doesn’t need a clearance.

This is what we need…

"I fundamentally believe that our party is grounded in the values, principles, and aspirations of the working class. As chair of the DNC, that belief will guide my decisions and approach in the years ahead. In contrast, in only his first month in office, it’s become abundantly clear Donald Trump doesn’t give a damn about the kitchen-table issues that matter to most Americans,” Martin explained in the memo. “Trump and the billionaire advisors he has surrounded himself with don’t give a damn about what it takes for a working family to put food on the table and keep a roof above their heads – let alone make a better life for themselves and their loved ones.”

Martin wasn’t my first pick, but I’m still happy he got it, and looking forward to Dems getting back to the FDR stuff over the neoliberal bullshit.

We need to be the anti-establishment party again.

Musk effectively has unlimited access in the government now

Factually untrue…

But that hasn’t stopped the media from saying stuff about what’s going on, so I guess it makes sense seeing it repeated on social media

It leaves out one of the most important factors, the media and their role in censoring and magnifying news to fit the political identities of their consumers. Had they been accurately reporting on Trump’s actions and results first-term, no human being in their right minds would have elected him a second time.

You realize the first ones to boost trump was Hillary and the DNC…

Right?

Like I shouldn’t assume people lived thru it, it was 9 years ago, you might not have been paying attention to politics then.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-2016-donald-trump-214428/

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/08/bill-clinton-called-donald-trump-before-presidential-run-2016

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bill-clinton-called-donald-trump-ahead-of-republicans-2016-launch/2015/08/05/e2b30bb8-3ae3-11e5-b3ac-8a79bc44e5e2_story.html

https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-clinton-donald-trump-phone-call-report-2015-8?op=1

They knew people didn’t like Hillary and that nothing would change that.

So they found the worst person possible and talked him into running to make Hillary be the best choice. And still fucked it up.

Trump didn’t reshape shit.

When shit sucks, people go against the status quo.

Blame the dem party insiders who fixed the last three primaries to shove status quo candidates no one wanted down our throats. Practically while shouting “our else” in our faces the whole time. It worked once… When Trump was the incumbent so even Biden wasn’t the “status quo” candidate then trump was and he lost despite going against someone who couldn’t win a primary for 40 years

Then they honestly couldn’t figure out why they were losing the youth vote

Stop giving fascists credit for things the only other option keep fucking up.

The problem isn’t trump is some massive political force, it’s that people don’t have an option they actually want.

We haven’t run a good candidate for decades, neither party wants the election to be about how great their candidate is, just how shitty the other party is.

I get while Republicans do it, but the only explanation for Dems to do it is they’re playing for donations not votes, I just can’t believe they can blow thru a billion plus every four years and can’t do any better than this shit

Dems run national elections like a stepdad play Shoots and Ladders and desperately wanting the kids to like him, winning just isn’t even on the list of priorities.

Today, 45% of Democrats and left-leaning independents surveyed indicated they would prefer a more moderate Democratic Party, up 11% from 2021

Meaning the majority doesn’t want that…

And ignoring that right/left is too simplified.

I would hate for the Dem party to move towards the center on social issues they’re already too close to it.

But economically?

At this point that would mean they move towards the left again.

Make the US people feel higher gas price

It’s why I spent four years saying rather than tax incentives for electric vehicles, we need to just level the playing field and take away gas subsidizes. But good luck getting either party here to hurt fossil fuel profits. Both our options this election were pro-fracking.

It’s fucking insane that we can’t socialize healthcare, but everyone needs to pitch in so Bill can drive his giant truck an hour to sit at a desk for 8 hours twice a day.

There is literally zero reason for gas subsidizes when we’re trying to get people to move on from gas.