DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Trump Campaign Promises Part 4

Well who would make stoner chicken legal!?

I imagine the comeback statement from conservatives on that would be, screw the laws, build it anyways.

Don’t knock it until you try it. I make edibles out of a lot of things.

This was a joke about having weed growing in their chicken coops being illegal. We were cooking with weed in the 1970's.

I can read you know…and that’s great that you were cooking with weed in the 70s. And no, I never used raw chicken to make edibles. Smh, you can’t even tease or pile on any more.

I've witnessed the pile. And I've seen who's at the top of it.

Trump admin plans to cut more than 70,000 jobs at Department of Veterans Affairs, memo says

The Trump administration is planning to cut tens of thousands of employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to an internal memo obtained by CNN.

In a memo dated March 4 addressed to “under secretaries, assistant secretaries, and other key officials,” the Veterans Affairs department’s chief of staff Christopher Syrek said that the VA in partnership with the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, will move “aggressively” to restructure the VA across the entire department and “resize” the workforce.

As part of that, the department will aim to revert back to its 2019-era staffing levels of 399,957 employees, the memo said. That means more than 70,000 employees could be terminated as part of the restructuring, since the VA employed over 470,000 people as of October 2024, according to the department.

The memo, which was first reported by Government Executive, says administration and staff offices within the VA will need to conduct information gathering and report back to the Office of Personnel Management by April 14.

The VA grew significantly under the Biden administration, particularly to help implement the PACT Act that Biden signed into law in 2022 to help expand coverage and eligibility to millions of veterans who were exposed to toxins and hazards like burn pits while serving.

The national president of the American Federation of Government Employees issued a warning Wednesday about the risks of the planned cuts at the VA.

“Until Elon Musk and Donald Trump came on the scene, America never turned its back on our veterans and their families,” Everett Kelley said in a statement. “Their reckless plan to wipe out the VA’s ability to deliver on America’s promise to veterans will backfire on millions of veterans and their families who risked their lives in service for our country.”

The Trump administration has already terminated 2,400 employees at the VA, according to a Tuesday letter addressed to the VA Secretary from two Maine lawmakers, independent Sen. Angus King and Democratic Rep. Jared Golden. The letter expressed “utmost concern” about the lack of a stated reason for the firings and the number of veterans who have been fired.

“We expect the Trump Administration and the DOGE to uphold its commitment and continue to prioritize the health and well-being of our veterans,” the two wrote.

The VA’s plans to further cut its workforce come as other federal agencies have fired scores of employees at the direction of OPM, which was until yesterday advising agencies including the Defense Department to fire probationary workers.

On Tuesday, OPM revised that guidance to say that terminations were now at the discretion of the agencies. But the Pentagon said last month that it plans to ultimately fire five to eight percent of the military’s approximately 950,000 civilian employees, starting with an initial tranche of 5,400 probationary workers who don’t have “mission-critical” roles.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/05/politics/trump-admin-veteran-affairs-cuts/index.html

Thank you for your service.

NZ fires envoy to UK who questioned Trump's grasp of history

New Zealand has fired its most senior envoy to the United Kingdom over remarks that questioned US President Donald Trump's grasp of history.

At an event in London on Tuesday, High Commissioner Phil Goff compared efforts to end the war between Russia and Ukraine to the 1938 Munich Agreement, which allowed Adolf Hitler to annex part of Czechoslovakia.

Mr Goff recalled how Sir Winston Churchill had criticised the agreement, then said of the US leader: "President Trump has restored the bust of Churchill to the Oval Office. But do you think he really understands history?"

His comments were "deeply disappointing" and made his position "untenable", New Zealand's Foreign Minister Winston Peters said.

His comments came after Trump paused military aid to Kyiv following a heated exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office last week.

He contrasted Trump with Churchill who, while estranged from the British government, spoke against the Munich Agreement as he saw it as a surrender to Nazi Germany's threats.

Mr Goff quoted how Churchill had rebuked then UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain: "You had the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, yet you will have war."

Peters said Mr Goff's views did not represent those of the New Zealand government.

"When you are in that position you represent the government and the policies of the day, you're not able to free think, you are the face of New Zealand," local media reported Peters saying.

"It's not the way you behave as the front face of a country, diplomatically," he said, adding that he would have taken the same course of action no matter which country was being spoken about.

Mr Goff is a veteran politician who had been high commissioner since January 2023. Before that, he served for two terms as mayor of Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, and was leader of the Labour Party from 2008 to 2011. He had also held several ministerial portfolios, including justice, foreign affairs and defence.

Peters, who is also deputy prime minister, told reporters that he had made the decision to sack Phil Goff without first consulting Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.

When it was pointed out that Luxon was the leader of New Zealand, Peters responded: "I know he's the prime minister, I made him the prime minister."

The 79-year-old, who has previously worked with Mr Goff in government, leads the New Zealand First political party - which joined Luxon's National Party and the Act Party in 2023 to form the current ruling centre-right coalition government.

Luxon, for his part, said Peters' decision to fire Mr Goff without first consulting him was "entirely appropriate".

Former Prime Minister Helen Clark was among those who criticised Mr Goff's sacking, saying it was backed by a "very thin excuse".

"I have been at Munich Security Conference recently where many draw parallels between Munich 1938 and US actions now," she wrote in a post on X.

Under the 1938 Munich Agreement, Hitler took control of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. The deal failed to stop Nazi Germany from advancing deeper into Europe and World War Two began when he invaded Poland in 1939.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3yew446k5o

It seems a basic recap of history isn't valued the same way it used to be. Now it's cause to be fired from your job.

Mush/ie Musk calls Social Security a ponzi scheme.....richest man in world and our current President...call the kettle black- from the Guardian-"Trump’s new cryptocurrency, $Trump, soared and then crashed – exactly like a Ponzi scheme. It generated enormous profits for insiders and a cumulative $2bn in losses for more than 800,000 other investors.
Trump claims ignorance. “I don’t know if it benefited” me, he said. “I don’t know much about it.” (The Trump family and its business partners earned nearly $100m in trading fees alone on the coin.)
Musk has been promoting Dogecoin since 2019. Its value surged over 70% in the days following Trump’s announcement of the launch of Musk’s so-called
“department of government efficiency” (Doge). Since then, it’s dropped like a rock. A classic Ponzi scheme.

Trump is in the best place in the world to steal....and he has entitled a non-elected billionaire to wreck most of our government programs- WOW, what a country.

That trump is quite a guy. He claims to know nothing about the very things he knows a lot about then claims to know everything about the very things he seems to know nothing about.

Amen...eggs and grocery prices going down.....nope.....DOW/ stockmarket down- yes. Since February 19, the total amount D.O.G.E has claimed in government contract cuts has gone from $16 billion to less than $9 billion, according to an investigation from the NY Times. The DOGE.gov website is the only place where these cuts are publicly accounted for, yet it’s been littered with errors, duplicate claims, and numbers that don’t add up. Mush/ Musk claim he's got competent folks looking for fraud....BUT the numbers keep changing......the only numbers going up are government contracts for MUSH and his net worth keeps climbing.....he has his hand in the cookie jar and NO one is questioning his leadership.....What a country.

Wow I thought New Zealand leadership had more backbone than that. Lessons in history are forbidden to be discussed in diplomacy, how petty.

2 DC police officers involved in moped driver’s death reinstated after Trump pardons

Two D.C. police officers involved in a pursuit that left a moped driver dead are now back on the force after being pardoned by President Donald Trump in January.

Lt. Andrew Zabavsky and officer Terence Sutton had been convicted on charges related to a 2020 pursuit that ended with 20-year-old Karon Hylton-Brown crashing his moped.

“Officer Sutton and Lt. Zabavsky have been reinstated. MPD does not comment on personnel matters,” a spokesperson for D.C. police told WTOP in an email Tuesday.

Protests broke out in the fall of 2020 over Hylton-Brown’s death, around the same time as demonstrators nationwide called attention to police violence and the killing of George Floyd.

Sutton was convicted of second-degree murder in Hylton-Brown’s death. Both officers were also convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice and obstruction of justice for trying to cover up Hylton-Brown’s death.

One day after his inauguration in January, Trump granted the officers a “full and unconditional pardon.”

Prosecutors said Hylton-Brown was riding a rental scooter without a helmet in the Brightwood neighborhood, a violation of D.C. traffic rules, on Oct. 23, 2020. Sutton followed Hylton-Brown down an alleyway, without his police lights or siren activated, and sped up behind his scooter.

As Hylton-Brown drove out of that alley, he was struck by another car and later died.

Zabavsky, Sutton’s supervisor, tried to cover up the crash. He falsified reports to allege Hylton-Brown was driving under the influence, according to the Department of Justice.

D.C. police are not allowed to pursue a vehicle if the only reason is to make a traffic stop.

Prosecutors had argued Sutton knew Hylton-Brown as a member of a violent street gang and had reason to try to stop him.

Sutton had been sentenced to five and a half years in prison for the murder conviction and four years for the conspiracy and obstruction convictions, which would have been served at the same time as the sentence for murder. Zabavsky had been sentenced to a total of four years in prison.

Monica Hopkins, executive director of the D.C. chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, called the move to reinstate the officers “an affront to public safety,” in a statement Tuesday.

“For years community members sought justice in this case — only to have the unanimous verdict overturned and these officers be reinstated,” Hopkins wrote. “How are D.C. communities supposed to trust law enforcement when officers can abuse their power and not face consequences?”

The mother of Hylton-Brown’s daughter, Amaala Jones-Bey, filed a lawsuit in 2021 against the department and the officers involved. At the time of the pardons, an attorney representing Jones-Bey, David Shurtz, told WTOP the family planned to go forward with the civil suit.

An attorney for Sutton praised the presidential pardons in January.

“We’re very appreciative that he’s finally achieved what a status of innocence that never should have been jeopardized or in question over these past five years,” Hannon told WTOP in January.

https://wtop.com/dc/2025/03/2-dc-po...rs-death-reinstated-after-trump-pardons/

This was quite the organized, well-thought and very structured approach.







Rebuttal, anyone?

‘A disruptive effect’: How slashing staff at the Social Security Administration is sparking fears the system could collapse
Tami Luhby Jeremy Herb
By Tami Luhby and Jeremy Herb, CNN
9 minute read
Published 5:00 AM EST, Sat March 8, 2025



(CNN) — Millions of Americans could soon feel the impact of the deep staffing cuts being planned at the Social Security Administration, which is undergoing a massive reorganization that the acting commissioner has acknowledged is being steered by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

The loss of experienced employees who manage Social Security’s fragile and interdependent web of computer systems will likely leave the agency vulnerable to technical outages and, potentially, interrupt the benefit payments that are sent to more than 73 million retirees, people with disabilities and others, Martin O’Malley, who served as commissioner under the Biden administration, told CNN.

The former Maryland governor predicted a meltdown could occur within 90 days, though other employees and experts were unsure of the timing even as they agreed the risk exists.


“Everything they’re doing is driving this agency to system collapse,” O’Malley said of Social Security’s new management. “It will lead to interruptions in service, and that will ultimately cascade into more frequent system interruptions for the processing of claims, ultimately leading to system collapse and eventually the interruption of benefits.”

How a mid-level staffer rose to oversee the Social Security Administration within days

The agency’s overhaul is being led by acting commissioner Leland Dudek, though he has admitted that he’s not the one actually making the decisions, according to an attendee at a nearly two-hour meeting Dudek held with staffers, legal aid attorneys and other advocates earlier this week.

“People are coming in from the outside. They’re unfamiliar with the nuances of our agency,” the attendee said Dudek responded when asked who is in charge. “It’s DOGE – not the DOGE kids, it’s the DOGE management.”

President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the agency, Frank Bisignano, is awaiting Senate confirmation.

While the president has said repeatedly he will not touch Social Security benefits, the changes being wrought by the Trump-approved DOGE team could harm the entitlement program that tens of millions of Americans depend on for monthly payments, current and former employees and advocates say. What’s more, both Trump and Musk – who last week called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” – have spread dubious and misleading information about alleged fraud in the system, raising red flags about their true intentions among advocates.

Looming cuts
Like other federal agencies, Social Security is going through a period of upheaval as it seeks to comply with Trump’s directive to shrink the size of the federal workforce. It plans to shed 7,000 employees, or about 12% of its staff.

Already, many senior staffers have exited as Dudek, a former mid-level manager who was elevated by Trump last month after collaborating with DOGE, is shuttering divisions, offering early retirement and voluntary separation packages to all staffers and threatening layoffs as part of a reduction in force, or RIF.

However, the overhaul lacks strategic planning, which could have serious ramifications for an agency that has never missed a benefits payment in its 90-year history, according to advocates and employees CNN interviewed. The focus is on swiftly shrinking Social Security’s staff with little thought given to making it function more efficiently or transferring the knowledge of those who depart, several said.

“We have a bunch of individuals with no or little experience in the operations of the agency trying to run one of the most important benefit programs in our country,” said Jack Smalligan, a senior policy fellow at the Urban Institute who previously was a longtime official at the Office of Management and Budget, where he focused on Social Security. “The downsizing is happening in such an unstructured, unplanned manner, it puts the agency at special risk.”

Even Dudek admitted at the meeting that the DOGE team could make mistakes and “break things,” the attendee said. And he acknowledged that he’s had concerns about benefit interruptions but said he is doing everything he can to prevent them.

The acting commissioner told attendees that the way the reorganization is being carried out is “fundamentally different” than how he’s seen government operate before. Typically, agency leaders would spend several months discussing and formulating a plan, but now the DOGE team has told them there isn’t time and they “just have to do stuff,” according to the attendee.

As an example, Dudek backtracked on Friday from his decision to end two contracts that help new parents in Maine request Social Security numbers and cards for their newborns at the hospital and that share death records with the agency.

“As a leader, I will admit my mistakes and make them right,” Dudek said about the canceled contracts, which garnered media attention.

The shakeup comes as Social Security’s staffing is at its lowest level in decades even as the number of retirees has soared as the Baby Boomers age.

In 2010, the agency’s 67,000 workers provided benefits to 60 million Americans, according to Rich Couture, a spokesperson for the American Federation of Government Employees’ Social Security General Committee. Now, it has 57,000 staffers assisting 73 million people.

“Losing staff will crater the agency’s ability to serve the public and that could potentially have a disruptive effect on the provision of benefits,” he said, noting that the chaos and uncertainty has already eroded employees’ morale and adversely affected their ability to do their jobs.

What’s more, culling staff will lead to an increase in improper payments – the very thing that Musk has railed against – as workloads balloon, O’Malley said. And it will take longer to catch and correct those mistakes.

The Social Security Administration did not return a request for comment.

Outages happen
Social Security’s core, mission-critical computer systems are run on an aging programming language, known as COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language).

The computer system is old enough that its monochromatic green screen upon loading says “welcome to the future” – an irony given the age of the technology.

“There had been talk about removing it, because it seems so ridiculous, but that would have cost money and required more staff that they didn’t have,” O’Malley said. “So they’ve never done that.”

COBOL is no longer taught as a computer language to more recent engineering hires. The employees who know it best at Social Security are often those who have been around the longest – meaning they are prime candidates to leave the agency as staffing is cut.

Roughly 30% of the employees on the chief information officer’s team are eligible to retire, O’Malley said, and the number is even higher in a key division that manages the technology that handles everything from claims to payments, the Office of Benefit Information Systems.

“This system needs a lot of maintenance, and the concern is that if they’re not careful with their firing – and they’re obviously not – these people who are experts in COBOL tend to be retirement age,” said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, an advocacy group.

Democratic Lawmakers address hundreds at the "Nobody Elected Elon" rally outside of the Department of The Treasury building on February ?4, 2025 in Washington, D.C. Elected Democratic members of Congress were denied entry into the building earlier in the day after Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) gained access to the Treasury Department's payment systems.
Related article
Federal workers, CNN wants to hear from you

Advocates and former Social Security officials say that the systems are incredibly intertwined, meaning that the computer outages have ripple effects that can affect other areas of the agency.

There are 3,600 applications that are all connected to keep the agency running, and the 10 regional offices have built their own tech workarounds to solve problems that arise, a former senior technology official at the agency told CNN.

“The amount of shadow IT that’s in place at SSA is shocking,” the former official said. “There’s a lot of custom-built code that’s also been allowed out in the field. … There’s certainly a huge opportunity to correct it, but you have to do it strategically.”

Last year, there were two outages that briefly crippled Social Security’s computer systems. Benefit payments were not affected, but employees across the country were unable to do anything like process new claims, make changes to beneficiaries’ records or help people resolve issues with their accounts.

One of the interruptions was caused by the global Crowdstrike outage, and the other from a hardware server failure that impacted 152 systems, said the former tech official. The outages both lasted several hours and took hundreds of people to get the systems functioning again.

“They’ve never really put the right kind of money and investment to these old systems to prevent these kind of cascading failures,” the official said.

O’Malley said that that he believes these failures are going to become more frequent without sufficient staff to maintain the ancient computer systems and eventually could lead to a “system collapse” that impacts benefits.

“Right now, they’re driving these people that understand the IT architecture, understand how things are connected, understand how things work – and they’re driving them out of the agency as quickly as they can, with absolutely zero transfer of knowledge,” he said. “We looked at attrition as the fire breathing dragon at the gate that needed to be defended against. These guys think it’s a fire upon which to douse kerosene and to give people incentives to leave.”

Fewer offices and longer waits
The loss of staff – along with the closing of agency sites across the country – means that it will be tougher for people who need help to find assistance. DOGE has listed lease terminations for nearly four dozen locations across the country, prompting bipartisan concerns from some federal and state lawmakers.

“If you have a question, haven’t gotten your benefit or need something answered, there’s no one to follow through with,” said Connecticut Rep. John Larson, a Democrat and longtime defender of the program.

In particular, low-income Americans who qualify for the Supplemental Security Income program could struggle to obtain benefits since they have to apply in person, Altman said.

Also at risk are people with disabilities, who already face delays in obtaining benefits. Staff cuts will worsen the backlog of initial disability applications and appeals, which already topped 1.4 million in February, Smalligan said. It takes nearly eight months, on average, to receive an initial decision on a disability claim, roughly double what it took prior to the pandemic.

Even before Trump took office, Social Security was cutting back on services, said Jill Hornick, a union official at the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1395. In December, Social Security field offices stopped taking walk-in customers, requiring everyone to have an appointment.

The new policy could help the Trump administration shrink the agency, she warned.

In Dudek’s meeting this week with advocates, Social Security officials pushed back on concerns that DOGE was closing agency offices, suggesting in some cases only a subset of office space was being eliminated, and not the parts used for customer service, according to notes taken by another meeting attendee and viewed by CNN.

Some details from the meeting were first reported by the Washington Post.

Trump’s conflicting comments
The overhaul at Social Security comes as Trump has tried to position himself as a defender of the beloved program. Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign and into his first six weeks in office, Trump has repeatedly vowed not to tamper with the benefits.

“Social Security won’t be touched, other than if there’s fraud or something – we’re going to find it,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity last month.


Trump and Musk set their sights on Social Security by spreading rumors

But at the same time, both Trump and Musk have made comments suggesting Social Security does have a target on its back.

In an interview last week with podcaster Joe Rogan, Musk said: “Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.” And Musk posted on X a chart claiming that tens of millions of Americans older than 100 were still receiving Social Security benefits – a claim that appears to be baseless. But that didn’t stop Trump from dedicating a lengthy chunk of his address to Congress on Tuesday evening to reading the dubious statistics from Musk’s chart.

Attacking Social Security with dubious fraud allegations “shakes people’s confidence” and trust in government,” Altman said

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/08/politics/social-security-administration-staff-cuts/index.html

Not a rebuttal, but "bad behavior" being normalized isn't limited to Trump. Feels rather pot calling the kettle.

He certainly has some good points. But as he (a partisan politician) is the messenger, it's going to get ignored by "half" of Americans.

He says unprecedented a lot, but a lot of it doesn't seem unprecedented. It's a matter of degree. (He says "not on this scale")

Don't get me wrong, it's totally jacked up. But the balls been rolling the same way for a long time, it's just picked up speed. The, effectively, we only steal a little and are discreet, so we're different argument loses me. Burying corruption in 600 page bills is its own kind of anesthetic.

Sucks when someone else is profiting from being more corrupt than you. Welcome to the other side. It sucks here. Now you know how many voters feel about you and your colleagues, Mr. Senator.

Yes, it is totally unacceptable.

As I have stated all along, that 270 million Musk invested in trump, yes invested, not donated, is paying dividends just as I said it would. The corruption is so obvious and so clear it's both sad and sickening.

Dear Lord man. Nothing in our nations history compares to this level. But you can't help but create another false equivalency. There has been corruption on both sides. He actually made that point. But this is unprecedented far beyond anything we've ever seen. Any attempt to minimize it, claim it's nothing new and rationalize it is simply ridiculous.

The corruption is so obvious and so clear it's both sad and sickening.

I find myself agreeing with you on something.

I think trying to rationalize the "lesser" corruption is ridiculous.

It's not about being equal. It's about shady garbage being unacceptable, period.

So robbing one bank is the same as robbing twenty banks. Got it.

Yes, both bank robbers should be locked up. I don't care if you stole $500K or $500B, it's still "grand larceny."

"Oh, he only ripped off a community savings and loan in the middle of nowhere. He's not a real bank robber."

That's not a good analogy.

But leave it to the contrarian in chief to try and paint this as something we've seen that's been done by both parties before. No it hasn't. As for dismissing the message and evidence because it came from a politician .... Yeah that makes perfect sense. Not.

Both are bank robbers. But even the law recognizes and understands that each bank robbery counts and the one who robbed 20 gets convicted for all 20. It recognizes that each offense adds to the sentence and is yet another crime.

Ask Bob Menendez. He's doing 11 years.

According to you the one who robbed 20 banks is no different that the one who robbed 1 bank. The law says otherwise.

That's what people do when they can't dispute the facts themselves. Instead they attack the messenger.

All those criminals and drug lords deported back to wherever and yet Fentanyl OD’s is on the rise under Trump. Inflation going through the roof under Trump. Insurance coverage nearly unattainable with Trump. F your feeling signs all over the place under Trump. Homelessness increases exponentially with Trump and president Elon. What was it you voted for again? Hate? Being mean to others is going to be cool? What was it?. We do deserve the leaders we have. Well played Goper’s.

J/C

You keep voting for the "party" "animals", you keep getting "party" "animal" behavior. I didn't vote for either. Somethings got to give.

Getting backdoored by donkeys or pancaked by elephants both are unacceptable to me. Feel free to keep irrationalizing that your pack is the better option. I'm tired of slip and sliding toward the void. We need change. We need individuals with empathy and morals. Not partisan hacks with open pocket policies that complain about where the other group's money comes from while taking theirs wherever they can get it.

The level of mental gymnastics it takes to create a scenario that dismisses what we have seen over the past six weeks to being unlike anything we've ever seen before in our lifetime and to create such a false equivalency rises to the level of earning a gold medal.

Your ability to turn someone's position into something that they never said and try to make it personal deserves something. Probably not a medal.

So who got your vote?

According to you they're all the same. We are witnessing just how false that is. You haven't seen what personal looks like when it comes from me. Considering your vulnerable sensibilities I'm pretty sure you don't want to either.

All bad and all the same are two different things. I get that it's hard to hold more than one idea at the same time for some people. Please give me all the smoke and get yourself permabanned. Why anyone continues to put up with you is beyond me.

Your pleasure is not my objective. You have made it clear you have issues that make you easily triggered so not only will I not get myself "permabanned" which isn't even a word, out of kindness I try to keep myself somewhat constrained when addressing you. You're welcome BTW...


Yet here you are.

The fact is you openly admit you refused to vote for either. Which now it seems means you sat back and tried to do nothing in order to help allow the worse thing to happen. It seems as if in your world that all makes perfect sense. I'm not a huge fan of either party but at the same time I saw what was coming and at least attempted to stop it.

No answer..mmm. Means to me you didn’t vote. If true that’s one the most unpatriotic play a US citizen would do.

Must be nice to live in a fairy tale where a check in a box for someone else bad absolves you of all responsibility.

I tried to talk sense into people dead set on voting for people they're not fans of. Sadly, one can't make other people do the right thing.

I didn't answer the question because I've answered it a dozen times with you before and it doesn't seem to stick. Why do it again expecting a different result? To me, supporting modern politicians and the rigged system that gives the illusion of your vote mattering is the most unpatriotic play, but you're allowed to have your own opinions.

According to your line of reasoning doing the right thing led us to the worse possible option imaginable. The likes of which we have never seen before. You still can't seem to grasp that.

lol I can’t remember you actually questioning anybodies check box for trump. If you did my bad, just didn’t seem proportional to me.

No, I'm saying you didn't do the right thing.

I'm saying any one person's vote can't change anything no matter how many times the "Your Vote Matters" propaganda says otherwise. Does my voting Kamala change the result? No. Does my voting Bernie? No. Does my voting any name I could write in on the ballot change the result? Still no.

I can grasp it how screwed we are. I don't claim my voting for a loser is the end of my responsibility.

I'm still "fighting" against a tide of brainwashed party pushers. I'm more likely to change minds that way than by ticking a box. Change one mind, that person can change other minds. What did your vote do?