Moderating

Local Level Fuckery and Corruption sh.itjust.works

Basic Glitch @sh.itjust.works 6mo ago

🤔 I wonder what reason Trump, Netenyahu, and MbS could have for wanting to cause the apocalypse?

6mo ago

TIL Jeffrey Epstein may have held powerful influence over the nation's largest sex offender database via his ties to Leon Black

https://www.rackspace.com/newsroom/strategic-partnership-palantir

Basic Glitch @sh.itjust.works 6mo ago

And in other odd coincidences that totally aren't odd coincidences, and you're weird for thinking there's anything weird about it, Rackspace announced they were teaming up with Palantir 2 weeks ago:

6mo ago

TIL Jeffrey Epstein may have held powerful influence over the nation's largest sex offender database via his ties to Leon Black

Basic Glitch @sh.itjust.works 6mo ago

6mo ago

Military Leaders Say Iran War Is So Trump Can Bring About “Armageddon”

Why Can’t Top Democrats Just Say “No War With Iran”?

You're not wrong, and to be clear I voted for Kamala just like I begrudgingly voted for Biden in 2020, and if somebody wants to argue things would be just as fucking horrible right now with Kamala as president, I would assume they're a troll or just a contrarian not worth arguing with.

But if we're looking at this as a continuum of who is to blame if the world were to end today, I do have to say I think there are plenty of more blameworthy people than just those on the left who either fell for propaganda or refused to compromise their values, and honestly (if not naively) believed they were making the right choice.

Regardless, we can't change that now, but if the world ends this way, as of this day I honestly would have to say the establishment Democrats are continuing to edge towards more complicit than blameless, even while knowing this is their chance to prove why they deserve any votes they don't receive.

If I could do 2024 again, I would still vote for Kamala, but I have to say, it makes me more than just a little angry to see so little effort by establishment Democrats to consider their constituents before their donors.

It's definitely not all Democrats, and there have been some (like Wyden) who have made their opinions very clear. Those democrats deserve every vote they can get. But shit like this from Schumer only helps to undermine democracy and public faith in the democratic party. It would be great to not have to constantly question who's interests he actually has in mind.

6mo ago

Military Leaders Say Iran War Is So Trump Can Bring About “Armageddon”

Basic Glitch @sh.itjust.works 6mo ago

One such note included an anecdote from a noncommissioned officer, who reported that their commander had “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”

Anything can be "part of God's divine plan" as long as some fundamentalist asshole wants to claim it is.

Was protecting pedophiles all part of God's divine plan too, or were y'all just improvising? Guess we'll all just have to wait and hear what God says. Probably sooner than any of us were expecting thanks to these ~~mentally I'll murderous cunts~~ "righteous angels" who walk among us.

6mo ago

What is your funniest case of misheard song lyrics?

Also, I knew I was forgetting the best one. I sang this with my whole heart and soul from the time it came out ~1997 until somebody corrected me ~2020 pandemic:

"I believe in the sand beneath my toes The beach gives a feelin', an earthy feelin' I believe in the faith that grows" ....

"And the four eyed goats can make me cry" right?

Wrong! It turns out it's "And the four right chords can make me cry"

6mo ago

Permanently Deleted

Not even sure what’s in it.

It's complicated.

In its simplest and most deconstructed form:

For those with a more sophisticated palate who prefer a "cooler" ranch:

For the innovative and bold God tier elites, sent to walk among mortals to help steer humanity towards greatness, who prefer their cool ranch also be hot:

6mo ago

Permanently Deleted

Basic Glitch @sh.itjust.works 6mo ago

Ohh la dee da your majesty.

6mo ago

Permanently Deleted

Basic Glitch @sh.itjust.works 6mo ago

Everybody likes ranch, and if you say you don't, you're lying to try and seem fancy.

6mo ago

What is your funniest case of misheard song lyrics?

Sex and buy lunch! Sex and buy lunch. Sex and buy lunch! Sex. And. Buy lunch.

Also,

We're the redneck kings of funk!

It's not fair to remind meh. Of the cross-eyed bear that you gave to meh! You. You. You. Oughtta know!

6mo ago

Barron Trump barred from military service as Iran war sparks outrage

Basic Glitch @sh.itjust.works 6mo ago

O captain! My captain!

6mo ago

Barron Trump barred from military service as Iran war sparks outrage

diagnosed President Trump with bone spurs as a favor to his father, Fred Trump, in order to help him avoid the military draft.

So Barron might be "too tall" to serve his country...? and even if he's not I'm sure we'll find out real quick that bone spurs run in the family.

It's so insane that it has always been standard practice for wealthy and powerful men to start wars then refuse to send their own children to fight, but it's especially egregious watching the Trump administration carry this shit out. The level of planning leading up to this to create another endless war seems so obvious in hindsight.

•Hegseth's "anti-woke" military speech

•Elimination of government loans for education (even for nursing and medical school, so only the wealthy can afford an education, let alone a deferment. If you're not born rich you have 2 options: take out private loans at a huge interest rate or join the army. Sign yourself over to the oligarchs one way or the other.)

•Up the country's birth rates (gotta gradually replace them as they die by the thousands at war)

•Openly admitting your goal is to eliminate the entire department of education. Because you don't need an education when your entire path birth to death has already been laid out for you:

You're born to serve while Trump and his oligarchs sit in their country club and move you around like a piece of plastic on a game board.

Life is hard and it seems like people are constantly fighting and dying around you from the moment you're born. It's all you know. Everyone around you is sick, destitute, and miserable. There are no jobs. You have no education. You know nothing but struggle and see no future for yourself.

The army is the only hand reaching out and offering to help pull you up, so you grab it.

Then you either die thousands of miles away from your home or you come back and spend the rest of your life wounded, without a doubt mentally and pretty often physically.

If you try to speak out against it or warn others, you're accused of being "woke." There is no hesitation to show you how little your rights, that you were told you were fighting for, mean to the people who sent you to fight.

6mo ago

Confirmed: Cancer Free!

Glad you're better!

Since my wife had her own medical event this year involving a massive infection, spinal intrusion and below knee amputation

Omg! I'm so sorry, y'all have had such a rough start to the year. I hope she's feeling better and y'all can catch a break.

we already hit the out of pocket maximum on our insurance for the year.

My husband had a surgery at the beginning of the year a few years ago and we met our out of pocket earlier than we ever had before.

It's such a weird feeling bc it's like you know it's a broken and unnecessarily complicated and expensive system in the U.S. At the same time walking out of a doctor's office or hospital without having to pay almost feels like you finally figured out how to take advantage of some kind of crooked points system, and now you can now treat yourself to the "luxury" of healthcare that you've always paid for but avoided using.

6mo ago

Florida wants its own CIA. That could lead to unchecked domestic surveillance

•HUGE C.I.A. OPERATION REPORTED IN U.S. AGAINST ANTIWAR FORCES, OTHER DISSIDENTS IN NIXON YEARS (New York Times Dec. 1974)

The CIA does whatever they want, shirt brother. They always have.

•2022: How the CIA Is Acting Outside the Law to Spy on Americans

•Operation CHAOS or Operation MHCHAOS was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) domestic espionage project targeting American citizens operating from 1967 to 1974, established by President Lyndon B. Johnson and expanded under President Richard Nixon, whose mission was to uncover possible foreign influence on domestic race, anti-war, and other protest movements. The operation was launched under Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Richard Helms by chief of counter-intelligence James Jesus Angleton, and headed by Richard Ober.

•The 1975-76 Church Committee congressional hearings probed widespread intelligence abuses by the FBI, CIA, IRS and NSA. Headed by Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho) in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the committee exposed how under the guise of national security agencies spied on American citizens for political purposes during the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations.

•2014: Former Church Committee Calls for New Investigative Panel

The letter comes after revelations of sweeping domestic surveillance programs by the NSA as well as charges by Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein that the CIA is spying on and obstructing a Senate investigation into CIA torture methods.

They also seemed to realize a long time ago they could get away with even more unconstitutional shit with even less oversight by outsourcing domestic surveillance to private contractors like Wackenhut (which would eventually become current ICE contractor, GEO Group)

•Many of the Wackenhut documents and a series on student movements in California highlight the suspected connections between Communism, opposition to the Vietnam War, and the broader left counterculture of the 1960s, and document the right's evolving definition of "subversion."

•Ice contractor plans for surveillance boom under Trump migrant crackdown: Geo Group, an Ice partner, is moving at ‘unprecedented speed’ to build out its monitoring, executive chair says

•3 weeks ago: The Central Intelligence Agency said it’s overhauling how it procures technology from the private sector, as part of an effort to more quickly adopt leading-edge capabilities for use in its missions. The new acquisition framework, made public Monday, involves a centralized vendor vetting system and a streamlined IT authorization process to “significantly reduce the time between when CIA defines a mission requirement and when it receives operating authority,” the agency said in a prepared statement.

7mo ago

Florida wants its own CIA. That could lead to unchecked domestic surveillance

Basic Glitch @sh.itjust.works 7mo ago

CIA-style structure at the state level that blurs the traditional line between state law enforcement and intelligence work.

Well duh, you can't have a neo-confederacy destroy the union without an army.

Who needs DHS funding when you can just shuffle things around and funnel ICE and all of their 287-g state-federal partnerships into FIA? Or any of the ::Insert your red state here:: Intelligence agencies that will be created after that?

7mo ago

Suspect in Texas shooting wore 'Property of Allah' clothing and Iranian flag emblem, AP source says

Watch this (and probably multiple suspiciously timed terror related events linked to Iran between now and November) be used as the excuse for why the midterms have to be cancelled... For our own "safety"

"We're destroying democracy to save America!" -Some authoritarian shitbag who works for either the Heritage Foundation/CIA faction of the Trump administration or the Silicon Valley/CIA faction.

7mo ago

The C.I.A. Helped Pinpoint a Gathering of Iranian Leaders. Then Israel Struck.

NYT (2010): Nazis Were Given ‘Safe Haven’ in U.S., Report Says

Why not just be upfront about it then? Why did they try to hide the details for decades?

The 600-page report, which the Justice Department has tried to keep secret for four years, provides new evidence about more than two dozen of the most notorious Nazi cases of the last three decades.

Perhaps the report’s most damning disclosures come in assessing the Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement with Nazi émigrés. Scholars and previous government reports had acknowledged the C.I.A.’s use of Nazis for postwar intelligence purposes. But this report goes further in documenting the level of American complicity and deception in such operations.

They kept it hidden because they knew even then that controlling public opinion depends on controlling the narrative and the information the public receives or doesn't receive, hence reality based communities.

The history we're told about the collapse of the Soviet Union, and creation of modern Russia's own Oligarchy/managed "democracy," also seems to follow a similar narrative control pattern, and never acknowledges the fact that key members of the Heritage Foundation (the organization behind Project 2025), who openly opposed democracy, were in the Soviet Union just before the collapse, coaching Soviet politicians and holding mock elections to help spread "democratic values."

•"You capture the Soviet Union --I'm going to capture the states."-Thomas Roe, Heritage Foundation board member and founder of the State Policy Network to fellow Heritage Foundation board member Robert Krieble.

•In 1989, the Krieble Institute was created "to promote democracy and economic freedom in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe."

•1989: A Republican in Moscow (WaPo article about Paul Weyrich holding mock elections)

•"I don't want everyone to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."- Paul Weyrich (1980), creator of the Heritage Foundation.

•1991: RUSSIA HOUSE, TRADING IN ITS NAME WaPo Article about the first ever go between for U.S. and Russian businesses involving Weyrich and Krieble

•PBS Documentary about Weyrich and Krieble involvement in Collapse of USSR Playing For Power (2012)

But again, it's just one of those things that nobody talks about or acknowledges for some reason, even as we're watching the Heritage Foundation sitting in the White House, privatizing the U.S. government, and destroying any remaining scraps of democracy left in America.

Trump's current CIA director coincidentally also has strong ties to Heritage.

•2024: Heritage Applauds John Ratcliffe as CIA Chief in President-elect Donald Trump’s Administration

Maybe in another 30+ years, we can start to open up the dialogue on the stuff we still don't acknowledge today?

7mo ago

The C.I.A. Helped Pinpoint a Gathering of Iranian Leaders. Then Israel Struck.

•Operation Paperclip (1945-1959): Although he officially sanctioned the operation, President Harry Truman forbade the agency from recruiting any Nazi members or active Nazi supporters. Nevertheless, officials within the JIOA and Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—the forerunner to the CIA—bypassed this directive by eliminating or whitewashing incriminating evidence of possible war crimes from the scientists’ records, believing their intelligence to be crucial to the country’s postwar efforts.

Also when people throw that "we need to support our country and support Israel" in your face, (as if opposing authoritarian governments means you also oppose all Israelis and Americans, including those opposed to their own authoritarian governments), consider reminding them of the reality behind the U.S. government's support of Israel:

U.S. staunch support of Israel can indeed be traced back to the late 1940s following WWII. However, not because the U.S. government were made up of the all American heros who wanted the world to know they stood in solidarity with Jewish people following the Holocaust (to be clear this is what I was always taught and believed was true until a few months ago).

It was because they needed an established ally in the middle east to help them control oil reserves, and to oppose socialism in Palestine they worried would lead to alignment between Israel, Palestine, and the Soviets as well as the Soviets gaining strength via control of those oil reserves.

Not to mention, the decision to "support" Israel following WWII, occured while members of the U.S. government were also secretly carrying out Operation Paperclip, and helping Nazi war criminals escape justice! Because once again, the truth has always been that the main concern of those in control of U.S. foreign policy following WWII, was to ensure the Soviets did not gain an advantage over the U.S. as a superpower. In the case of Operation Paperclip, the U.S. was concerned the Soviets would use information held by Nazi war criminals to advance the science and technology of their own governments.

And to further emphasize why it's always been such a bullshit bad faith argument to claim opposition to the anti-democratic fascist authoritarians who hide their crimes behind government power and claims of nationalism/patriotism, automatically means you also oppose the countries they use as shields to carry out this bullshit, guess what government agency just so happened to carry out Operation Paperclip?

The forerunner to the CIA, because of course they fucking did:

•President Joe Biden’s promise for the US to “stand with Israel” continues a special relationship that dates back to 1948, when President Harry Truman became the first world leader to recognize the Jewish state, moments after its creation.

•Oil drives our Israel policy: New government documents reveal a very different history of America and the Middle East

1948: when the struggle over Palestine was at its height. In the immediate postwar years, the United States defined its policy in the Near and Middle East in terms of assuring unimpeded access and control by U.S. oil companies of its great material prize, petroleum. Congressional hearings on the role of petroleum and the national defense envisioned petroleum as a weapon of war. It followed that ensuring the presence and stability of compatible regimes was an essential dimension of policy, as was containing and crushing those whose nationalist and reformist orientation rendered them suspect.

Honestly let all of that that sink in. Truman, the POTUS in 1948, the man who held the highest (elected) office in the country, didn't even know the extent of what the OSS/CIA was doing when Operation Paperclip began. Since the very beginning, unelected individuals within U.S. intelligence agencies, have been completely unaccountable and answered to nobody.

They did it in Vietnam, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and they're doing it again now in Iran (while also once again being buddy buddy with Saudi Arabia on the DL ... I fucking wonder why 🤔)

They do whatever the fuck they want, all in the name of "spreading democracy and protecting national security." And if you have a problem with it, then somehow you're being unpatriotic and unAmerican. "You're either with us or against us" is the most anti-democratic bullshit propaganda, and it's exactly what has enabled these people to hold an inverted totalitarian grip on power since WWII. Now they're nakedly helping the Trump administration destroy any remaining scraps of democracy at home, while continuing to cling to their interventionist bullshit lies in their never ending quest to protect corporate interests, gain profits, and control the majority of resources and territory around globe.

•Over the past several years, significant debate has emerged regarding the role that the private sector plays in national security operations. Since 9/11, the Intelligence Community has relied heavily on private contractors for many different types of support. Given the historic and growing ties between the Intelligence Community and private corporations, the 111th Congress will likely need to assess the overall value of this relationship. This memo provides members of Congress and their staffs with an overview of the role of private corporations working with and within the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC).

7mo ago

The C.I.A. Helped Pinpoint a Gathering of Iranian Leaders. Then Israel Struck.