Yes, pardoning someone basically means we are done speaking on the matter. Calling them traitors after they were pardoned is basically libel.
4,786 karma · joined August 6, 2022
That healthy skepticism likely won't cause any paradigm shifts in most cases, of course, but the point here is that is no reason to surrender the skepticism.
Ex-Confederates were traitors, that much is true. Were they never pardoned or otherwise acquitted of treason in a court of law then that would still be true today. Of course, that is not what happened: President Andrew Johnson pardoned them all unconditionally, and in the case of General Robert E. Lee (whose pardon was not processed due to clerical errors) his pardon was made effective retroactive to the date of application by an act of Congress.
Ex-Confederates are all therefore excused of their crime of treason, and to still attack them further citing that crime is baseless and unwarranted. They are Americans, and the men who fought are all American heroes who ultimately wished for a united and healed nation.
Calling Civil War era Americans traitors today is ruthlessly divisive rhetoric that only serves to sow conflict in a time when the country really does not need that kind of incendiary bullshit. Everyone who spews this false narrative should be ashamed of themselves, they are throwing mud upon those who chose to pursue peace instead of generational animosity.
[1]: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S2-C1-3...
Windows abandoned that from Windows 10 onwards, and Windows 11 is even worse.
Trump has an outsized presence and influence upon the Republican Party, both as President and as an ordinary American citizen, but this is rather unusual and not the norm.
Yes.
An Inspector-General is in charge of inspecting and auditing, as the name would suggest. That requires being impartial in absolute terms, because you must be able to call out problems no matter how inconvenient they are.
Being in a position of power means an inevitable accrual of reputation and influence, and 22 straight years of accrual is ridiculous. Her excessively long tenure is also unusual; the longest-serving Inspector-General besides her served for 8 years, shortest being 2 years not counting acting IGs, average is about 4 years each IG not counting her 22 year tenure.
So yes, I support her termination because her long tenure lends me no confidence she can perform her duties ethically anymore. There must be a regular changing of the incumbent to head off the office being bought or otherwise corrupted. There are millions of other D.C. bureaucrats to replace her with, and even more Americans overall. There is no reason to keep her specifically for this long and I daresay that the lack of a term limit for this office has to be an oversight.
These false narratives villifying and dividing the country long after the Civil War concluded are nonsense.
-President Gerald Ford
>Whereas the authority of the Federal Government having been reestablished in all the States and Territories within the jurisdiction of the United States, it is believed that such prudential reservations and exceptions as at the dates of said several proclamations were deemed necessary and proper may now be wisely and justly relinquished, and that an universal amnesty and pardon for participation in said rebellion extended to all who have borne any part therein will tend to secure permanent peace, order, and prosperity throughout the land, and to renew and fully restore confidence and fraternal feeling among the whole people, and their respect for and attachment to the National Government, designed by its patriotic founders for the general good:
-President Andrew Johnson
The Civil War is over, it ended over a century and a half ago. I again, sincerely, ask you to screw off with that false narrative which serves only to divide and weaken the unity and solidarity of the country.
Indeed. Not quite as far back in time as you sarcastically suggested, but down-to-Earth enough that Congress stops enjoying absolutely abysmal approval ratings and President Reagan's infamous line of "I am from the government and I am here to help." stops resonating so strongly as a prime criticism.
If we also have to destroy ostensibly useful institutions like NASA to achieve it, well then so be it. As I mentioned in a sibling comment, the chances for more amicable processes have come and gone.
Government workers going on strike means they're doing what we want them to do, which is nothing. As a Trump voter, I want these federal government workers to stop working so the astronomical waste of our time/money and disturbing of peace stops.
The best work the US government does is when it's doing nothing, because it's hardly working properly unless it's forced to (ICE is an example of government actually working again).
Whether the workers resign, strike/protest, or get back to work implementing MAGA policies in the office, we win.
All of this is happening within the Executive Office of the President, which is essentially fancyspeak to mean the government employees working the Executive Branch of the federal government. Those government employees serve at the pleasure of the President; Congress only has very limited influence (namely budgetary influences from the House and certain positions that require Senate confirmation).
So Musk, being appointed as a part of the Executive Branch, derives authority vested in the President of which Trump has delegated some to Musk for the purposes of implementing and enforcing DOGE policies.
Musk for his part also serves at the pleasure of the President, so whatever he does is ostensibly what Trump wants regardless of who actually does it.
Perhaps fortunately, I personally (second generation Japanese-American) was not directly affected by DEI. Maybe I should have experienced it somehow so I could give an even more damning opinion.
However, I was witness to family members (Japanese-Americans, Asians) who were discriminated against both positively and negatively citing DEI. Not to mention all those "minority owned" and "women owned" business categories that were prominent if you did any amount of officework. Just how widespread and deep this nouveau resurgence of racism and sexism were was and arguably still is both astonishing and terrifying.
I want everyone to be judged for their merit and character. I have absolutely no problem if "white protestant men" dominate a given sector if that is simply the result of judgments passed strictly on merit and character. People who can do <X> the best should be the people who get to do <X> without any regard to skin color or religion.
Giving me special treatment one way or another just because I'm Asian is fucking racist and I will neither accept nor tolerate it. I want to be seen and treated as an American like any other, it's right there in the Declaration of Independence: "All Men Are Created Equal."
Trump reiterating with a mandate that the government can not and will not judge people based on race, sex, religion, or any other DEI reasoning is something I unequivocally support and will support to my dying breath. This is equality in its most raw and sincere form: It does not and should not matter what you are born as, you will be judged for who you become.
What is most astonishing to me in all this is just how much we've reversed course on equality, considering one another as simply men among mankind, over the past two to three decades. You're literally trying to tell me that refusing to judge people based on their race is racism. Do you not understand how nonsensical that is? Do you understand how patently stupid that is from the perspective of a minority, or at least this particular Japanese-American man? What the sincere fuck.
"Diversity" in DEI is Discrimination. Equity in DEI is a violation of every man's right to pursuit of happiness. "Inclusion" is an affront to the sharing of diverse ideas and beliefs among mankind. I applaud and cheer for the resounding rejection of DEI, this is a step in the right direction both for the United States of America and for mankind. I voted for this in 2024 and I will vote likewise again Every. Single. Time.
Microsoft Office and games. No, not LibreOffice and Tux Racer.
Wine has gotten a lot better compared to years past, but if you need/want Windows software you still need Windows.
You also only get one shot at convincing them, since first impressions are everything. A better argument might be recommending MacOS, at least Microsoft Office works just fine there.
Also, if you're using esoteric hardware: Forget it.
We're just getting started, it's barely 11 days since Trump got in and started. It will be a while until things settle into a new arrangement.
>If you believe the work state employees do is worse than useless then go ahead and cheer.
I sincerely believe that the US government does its best work when it is doing nothing beyond what is strictly necessary, which frankly isn't a lot compared to its size right now.
>that we'd be better off if their funds were simply set on fire than put to use.
Considering we're trillions of dollars in debt, I applaud not spending money. It's ridiculous that the state of our finances is considered acceptable.
>I think what you actually want to happen is for Congress to reduce budgets.
That is indeed one of the ultimate goals. We'll see if House Republicans get in line this time.
Sincerely screw all that racist noise with extreme prejudice. In this regard, the Left did more work than anyone to get me to vote Trump.
I advise you read through the actual Executive Orders than some false propaganda material of at best questionable value.
What Trump is mandating with his EOs are a move back to judging people strictly by their merit, by their character. We are once again on the path to making Martin Luther King's dream a reality.
Here are the EOs with regards to the subject matter at hand:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/endi...
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/refo...
>Americans deserve a government committed to serving every person with equal dignity and respect, and to expending precious taxpayer resources only on making America great.
>Federal employment practices, including Federal employee performance reviews, shall reward individual initiative, skills, performance, and hard work and shall not under any circumstances consider DEI or DEIA factors, goals, policies, mandates, or requirements.
----
>This Federal Hiring Plan shall: ... prevent the hiring of individuals based on their race, sex, or religion, and prevent the hiring of individuals who are unwilling to defend the Constitution or to faithfully serve the Executive Branch;
This is the significant part.
Woke ideology was always unpopular when put to the test in the court of public opinion and sometimes even law. Whether it's entertainment products that got reviewbombed for incorporating "diversity", illegal hiring/enrollment quotas that once existed to enforce "inclusion", or the replacing of the word "equality" with "equity" because people started catching on that what was touted as equality actually wasn't.
Now that we have a President (and by extension a party) who was elected to get rid of all that, promises to do so are being kept.
As a Japanese-American, I 300% voted for and support this. Everyone should be judged on merit and merit alone, not whether they have the right skin color, sex organs/preferences, disabilities, or illnesses.
The conflict as parent commenter witnesses it continues because that small minority continue to (very loudly) disagree not on the merits. It is their prerogative to disagree if they desire, but their basis is much more about beliefs than superiority.
It's like Polandball memes where UK crazily chants "Britannia rule the waves...!" while US goes off to freedom some oil with its boats.
I voted for Trump and I am loving what he has started to do.
Small government has been a Republican Party talking point for as long as I can remember, but noone has actually done it. Not even first term Trump.
This time it's clearly different, for the first time in my life we are taking gigantic hammers and crowbars to tear the government down to size. Yes, it will be painful for all of us (that includes me too) especially in the short-term, but it's something that I firmly believe needs to happen for an even better future and second term Trump is keeping his campaign promise.
We actually got a small glimpse of this during first term Trump when he essentially emptied the State Department and left it that way for the duration of his tenure. The world was surprisingly more peaceful than it ever was and the country did just fine diplomatically, despite loud cries to the contrary.
I want more of that. I want an empty State Department again. I want an empty bureaucracy. I want a small, effective, efficient government. And even better, these mandates come with a mandate for judging people on their merits alone. As a minority (Japanese-American) I am ecstatic that DEI has finally been viciously put out to pasture, I firmly believe that All Men Are Created Equal.
All of this is what I voted for, I am happy I can get to see it all happen for real. If you disagree, and obviously we do, that's unfortunate but we'll just have to agree to disagree.
We're in his second term now with a very different landscape and wherever this train is heading it's just getting started.
>Tariffs will just get you counter-tariffs. After Trump's direct threats to Denmark, the EU is working on a bundle of counter-tariffs to apply if needed. That will equal lost export revenue as US products get priced out of the market.
Good. Denmark policies should be Denmark First, and so on.
>It's better to be involved in the world than to be a hermit kingdom.
We can be involved in the world without buying condoms for everyone.
Note that we're not even talking about the big ones like slashing the Pentagon's budget (yet), we're literally talking about slashing the money spent on buying condoms for Palestine/Mozambique and y'all are already screaming bloody murder.
I repeat: I don't really care. I don't want our taxes spent on this bullshit. Period.
I think the simplest way to describe it is that it's a religious conflict.
A not insignificant segment of people who develop and/or use Linux are fervent followers of POSIX philosophy, the Unix heritage, Free Open Source Software development, and the Anti-Microsoft Church (note: Poettering is a Microsoft employee).
These people have a religious duty to hate systemd, it's essentially heresy. It's not a disagreement based on technical or even practical merits, so the conflict can't be addressed with technical debates and will continue for the foreseeable future.
Indeed, revamping tax laws are definitely on the table. Tariffs will also indirectly and partially compensate for those avoided taxes.
>This will make America weak again. It will put America last.
In the immortal words of our Vice President, "I don't really care, Margaret." I don't want our taxes spent buying condoms for other countries (among many other things) and I don't believe I am the only one.
Again, "can" is the keyword.
In case you weren't aware, the US is literally trillions of dollars in debt. Not only can we not afford these expenses, we are literally borrowing money to pay those expenses which aren't even for our own benefit. Again: What the sincere fuck. This is a budget that would get taken out back and shot in any other sane circumstances.
We have countless pressing concerns right here at home where that $50 million dollars can make a significant impact to the benefit of all Americans. Even if there wasn't a line item, we can still slash $50 million dollars off the budget and reduce the debt which again is beneficial to all Americans.
And don't give me that "just print more dollars" bullshit either: That leads to inflation for everyone Americans and otherwise. It's ridiculous that spamming the printing presses is considered acceptable.
If China or whoever wants to buy condoms for other countries then they are very much welcome to. We can't fucking afford these stupid line items when we have a laundry list of our own. Screw "soft power influence", if the Pentagon and CIA line items weren't somehow enough already then we should also slash those too and get rid of all the waste.
America First.
Again: $50 million dollars is an insane amount of money, even moreso since it's American tax dollars and we're apparently spending it buying condoms for other countries. What the sincere fuck. That is not what I'm paying my taxes for, and I'm willing to bet a lot of Americans will agree with me.
Spend that $50 million dollars on anything for the direct benefit of Americans: Student debt, food stamps, Medicare, public schools, or condoms for that matter, I don't care. Spending this money on anything for Americans is better than spending it buying condoms for other countries. Absolutely noone can convince me this is a wise and justifiable use of our (my) taxes.
Please reconsider the utterly nonsensical nature of your statement. Anyone who says $50 million dollars is "not an insane amount of money" has no business commenting on financial affairs, let alone money provided by taxpayers.
>global cooperation as a tool for stopping authoritarianism at the source. We help nations
Cooperation is nice and warm, but the keyword there is "help". You can't help others when you need help yourself first, and right now today there are countless matters that concern ourselves and require proper attention.
Whether it's crumbling infrastructure, insufficient housing, rising costs of living and medical care, excessive costs and debts of education, measures and mandates necessary to prevent and recover from natural disasters, and many more, just imagine what another $50 million dollars could do. And it's not just that $50 million, there are certainly far more where that came from.
Hell, even if we have nothing else to spend money on we still have an utterly crazy amount of debt. Putting $50 million towards our debt (aka cutting $50 million in expenditures off our national budget) is $50 million less in debt.
>America doesn't have to help anyone. ... But we don't do that, because when we do we prove to the world that we are exactly the evil and selfish caricature of a nation they think we are.
There is nothing selfish about "putting on your own oxygen mask before helping others", aka America First. American tax dollars are first and foremost paid for the mutual benefit of Americans. If we happen to have any surplus left, then we can talk about how we can donate that money to charity for other countries.